10 Visitor Comments

1. Daniel May 5, 2013

   Hi Heligone,
   Good to see you doing these great experiments. May I suggest you add some LED lights to the experiment tank? The same concept as this video ‘NOT Computer Generated – MUSIC CYMATICS Visualization’ by Sha Man on Youtube.
   The main idea is maybe you can highlight the weaker waves farther from the droplet. If you add the precise stroboscopic frequency the drops might even look like they are floating:
   The pilot-wave dynamics of walking droplets by MITMathLab on Youtube.

   I am also interested what are your ideas about these experiments. Why did you start them? What do you think or know about their theoretical importance?

   If you are interested in a more theoretical approach as I am too, we can share ideas.

   I think its awesome you added Gabriel LaFreniere’s link to to your site after I gave you the tip. Did you have any time to read it? The only thing is that the exact link you did goes to a page in russian and its difficult to find the English part. Can you point directly to Gabriel LaFreniere’s Matter is made of waves that is in english?
   I have plenty more I want to talk to you later on.
   I hope you continue to explore this because its so brilliant!
   Peace.

   Reply
2. heligone May 5, 2013

   Dear Daniel,

   Thanks for your encouragments 🙂

   Indeed, one of the main difficulty in this experiment is to have a proper vizualization system so as to see the waves as far as possible from their emission point. The idea of ShaMan with different coloured LED is excellent, and i am planning to try it.

   Also, about stroboscopic effect : I did not fin a stroboscope fast enough (and cheap enough). But if I use a forcing frequency of 60Hz, the faraday waves and the walking droplet oscillate at 30Hz, which is the frequency of my camera : on such movies, the walker seems to move in a standing wave field which does not oscillate. Another solution is to shoot at very fast rate (1000fps) and then adjust the stroboscopic effect with video editing software. A Nice colour highfps camera can cost .?.. 20 000 USD !

   Also I’v read about LaFreniere’s website and blog : animations and vizualisations are awesome (even though the software cannot be downladed) I’ve not yet studied deeply the underlying theory, but it will come with time.

   One thing for sure : images and movies shown there show a surprising analogy with the walking droplet experiment.

   My personal interest is to try and reproduce the double slit single particle diffraction as described in one of Couder’s paper.

   Best Regards

   Heligone

   Reply
   • Daniel May 6, 2013

     Dear Heligone,

     I am so glad you feel encourage to continue this amazing research! Accomplishing the double slit experiment would be extraordinary!

     Its gratifying you are considering my suggesting of using lighting. When I suggested a stroboscope light I though you could use the very same LEDs as the source. You would need a signal strong enough to power the LEDs, which are very low consuming. Don’t you think that is an option?

     When you mention software editing it reminded me of a previous idea I had. You could use this new motion-enhancing video software” by MIT. I am not sure what movements it would enhance and how it would be useful. But I am sure it will be useful! And it will look astounding!
     Using video editing might be another way to simulate a stroboscope as you suggested with the camera you running at 30Hz.

     I can surely think of many ways to use video editing to make novel visualizations and experiment measures. Like using object detection software to measure speeds like on the MIT walking droplet movie.

     It makes me glad you checked out Lafreniere’s website. His graphical representations are very close to the walking-droplet outlook. That is something that made me quite excited when I first heard of Yves Coudes walking-droplet. Something that I had only saw in a very exotic, fringe theory against established quantum mechanics. Suddenly comes to life and has much of the predicted quantum and electromagnetic behaviour! Quite extraordinary!

     I am not sure how much of the complex behaviours are analogous. I would guess the electrical behaviour is the same. But I can’t be sure about Lafreniere’s “gluonic” fields or “gravity”.

     If you read more, it will contribute to a theoretical understanding and deeper experimental investigation. I am deeply interested in the possibility of achieving experimental evidence of composite particles analogous to the quarks and protons from the Lafreniere’s approach.

     All your work inspired me to start my own blog. I want to register some of my ideas in a coherent way regularly. There are some quite surprising developments done recently by a British scientist. Something I was expecting could happen and actually found about by searching on the exact subject I thought it would! It was discovered this year even though I was searching for the subject for more than 5 years! I hope I get to write about it soon so you can see it in the same light I did.

     Best regards,

     Daniel

     Reply
     • heligone May 6, 2013

       Ah if only I were a full time paid researcher, i would at once :
       – build a strobe generator for LED lights
       – get some motion tracker system to work : if you have any ideas ? I thought of Blender, or Matlab with custom build software … ?
       – adapt source code form MIT motion amplification software ( THANK YOU for that link !)
       – spend days reading new theories

       … all these might come…with time

       But what are those developments by a british scientist you’re talking about ?

       Reply
       • Daniel May 6, 2013

         Dear Heligone,

         I would think to make the LEDs emit stroboscopic light would not be a complicated thing. I expect there to be simple devices to buy on the market or simple public schematics to copy.
         These last holidays there were some Christmas’ LED lights with a flickering effect very similar to a stroboscope, if not the exact effect. If its not the right frequency, modifying such device would certainly be much easier than building something from scratch.

         When I mentioned computer video object detection I was thinking about this Open-Source Computer Vision Developer Kit. But specially user-friendly ready-to-use software built upon it. But I never investigated that subject.
         It has been years since I read much about Blender, maybe it has new features for object detection on videos. That would also be really straight forward to use as Blender has quite good documentation and instructions on using its resources.

         If you were a full time paid researcher you would be researching things your post-graduate teacher would assign you and not this. Remember Einstein developed his Relativity while he had the intellectual autonomy of being self-financed, by working on a completely unrelated job! I don’t know what is your current occupation or academic background. But I know your experiments show a lot of initiative, persistence, motivation, curiosity and skills. I imagine very few science students would show such attributes in the academic setting. And almost none would do that outside such setting. So you can be sure to be on an exciting path.

         Yes, the recent developments… I did intend on making you curious about that. Its completely groundbreaking. I want to present to you in a more proper way. If you wait a couple of days until I put some words together, I assure you will love it.

         Reply
         • heligone May 8, 2013

           Thanks for your many good ideas and kind comments 🙂

           Reply
         • MarcF December 2, 2013

           heligone, I can’t find a email contact… can I ask you to contact me directly? (vous avez mon email)

           Reply
3. Daniel May 6, 2013

   The link for the motion enhancing sftware video. It was not working on my previous post.
   Enjoy.

   Reply
   • heligone May 6, 2013

     very very interesting 🙂

     Reply
4. guest February 22, 2019

   Droplet motions fill a periodic table
   https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/02/20/1817065116/tab-figures-data

   Reply