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August 12, 2005

Strange But True!

Q. From a Salem, Oregon reader: "The soprano lies on her deathbed as the performance is nearing its end. She reaches the climactic moment in the music and belts her final, shrill and magnificent high note. Should the opera connoisseur in the third row worry about her glasses shattering? How about in the balcony?"

A. What kind of glasses? The old Ella Fitzgerald TV ad demo probably used a crystal-glass wine goblet and a very loud sustained note (maybe even amplified) to effect the shattering. The secret here is to match the frequency of the note to a natural resonant frequency of the glass, then to keep pumping in singing energy for a couple of seconds as vibrational energy builds, at fairly close range, says Kettering University physicist Dan Ludwigsen.


 
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