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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  563 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Chladni Figures (1787)

I never learned Chladni. Chladni figures demonstrate nulls, which are only useful in room acoustics, and room acoustics were better understood by the ancient Greeks, the Inca and the Maya than Europeans. it wasn't until 70 years after Chaldni that Helmholtz caught up to Vitruvius, even though echea were discussed in European literature in the 1500s.

Onorio Belli discussed hollow recesses under planks at the Lyttos ampitheater on Crete, which is not what Vitruvius wrote down - Vitruvius pictured big bronze jars rather than room acoustics because the Romans were fucking horrible at science. It's likely that the Romans didn't fully understand what the Greeks had done, because the Romans often didn't understand what the Greeks had done. The Arabs and Persians, of course, understood perfectly. It's worth pointing out that while Chaldni was busy writing up "hey look when you put flour on a snare drum and hit it it makes pretty pictures" while Sinan and others were applying those discoveries to everyday life, as they had done since the Muslim Conquest or before.

It's also pretty hilarious that this all ties back into Amazon Hobbitâ„¢, in which we can't have a big dumb show without having it be made up of parts of toys or some shit despite the fact that's all CG, all the time.

    I'm honestly amazed something so symbolic and thematic made it into production past the Amazon studio execs, who presumably were like "we're thinking something Game of Thrones-y? Maps and all that?" So, well done to whoever was responsible for it!