Credit: W. Walker Smith and Alain Barker via ACS
Key points:
- A researcher has converted the visible light given off by the elements into audio.
- The result is hauntingly beautiful melodies and some off-key notes that stick true to the translation from light to sound.
- The researcher says a sound-based periodic table could be a more inclusive tool for chemistry classrooms.
What does that element look like? What does that element smell like? What does that element taste like? Those are all “fair” questions when dealing with at least some of the periodic table of elements—although you’d want to be sure to taste only specific elements.
One question people do not typically ask is, what does that element sound like? The answer, apparently, is hauntingly beautiful.
Using a technique called data sonification, a recent college graduate has converted the visible light given off by the elements into audio, creating unique, complex sounds for each one. Today, at the American Chemical Society Spring 2023 meeting, W. Walker Smith reports the first step toward an interactive, musical periodic table.
Smith built a computer code for real-time audio that converted each element’s light data into mixtures of notes. The discrete color wavelengths became individual sine waves whose frequency corresponded to that of the light, and their amplitude matched the brightness of the light.
Early in the research process, Smith discussed the pattern similarities between light and sound vibrations. For instance, within the colors of visible light, violet has almost double the frequency of red, and in music, one doubling of frequency corresponds to an octave. Therefore, visible light can be thought of as an “octave of light.” But this octave of light is at a much higher frequency than the audible range. So, Smith scaled the sine waves’ frequencies down by approximately 10-12 , fitting the audio output into a range where human ears are most sensitive to differences in pitch.
Because some elements had hundreds or thousands of frequencies, the code allowed these notes to be generated in real time, forming harmonies and beating patterns as they mixed together.
“The result is that the simpler elements, such as hydrogen and helium, sound vaguely like musical chords, but the rest have a more complex collection of sounds,” says Smith.
Some of the notes sound out of tune, but Smith has kept true to that in this translation of the elements into music. These off-key tones—known musically as microtones—come from frequencies that are found between the keys of a traditional piano.
The next step is to turn this technology into a new musical instrument with an exhibit at the WonderLab Museum of Science, Health, and Technology in Bloomington, Indiana.
“I want to create an interactive, real-time musical periodic table, which allows both children and adults to select an element and see a display of its visible light spectrum and hear it at the same time,” said Smith. He adds that this sound-based approach has potential value as an alternative teaching method in chemistry classrooms since it’s inclusive to people with visual impairments and different learning styles.
Information provided by ACS.