Great Experiments

[AquaSwing]

Wow. Those are all experiments done by professionals with controls and other science like things. I was hoping for a thread about experiments you have done personally. So here's mine.

As an electrical engineering undergrad student and rookie audiophile, I wanted to see if a bucket of water could produce sound like a speaker. We gathered the required ingredients- an Adcom amplifier, a bucket, water, salt, and a scope.

We started by bridging the amplifier into mono for the 600 watt power. We choose the Adcom for two reasons- first, it could drive a high current and second, it was the only power amp available with an owner dumb enough to let me borrow it. We filled the 2 gallon bucket about half way and inserted the wires. We thought a nice 1k sine wave fed into the amp would provide a good starting point.

Initially we got nothing. Nada. We had the preamp cranked all the way. We started adding salt a tablespoon at a time until we had added maybe 15 or so and then the sine wave started playing. We measured voltage and current(Don't remember either value) and were suitably impressed. We put a few songs on and played them. Water does not make a very efficient or good sounding speaker.

The amplifier was very hot by this time and probably a little pissed off so to conclude the experiment I wondered if the water was getting hot. By the time someone had warned me that it was probably a bad idea I had jammed my right hand into the water. What came next could only be described by total pain while I realized that I was electrocuting myself and was pretty much locked in position. Fortunately one of the half dozen people that were observing the experiment noticed what was happening and quickly tackled me to get my hand out of the water before I died. That concluded the experiment.