For the second featured video of the day, I’ve picked Veritasium‘s

Pyro Board: 2D Rubens’ Tube!

In this jaw-dropping video by educational physics channel Veritasium (named after Veritas, Latin for truth, and ium, a common suffix for elements; the element of truth), Derek Muller travels to Denmark to see and film a 2D Ruben’s tube plane, an interesting creation that can literally visualize music via the power of fire.

A Ruben’s tube is a tube, with lots of holes on the top. The tube is then filled with a flammable liquid and set on fire, so that lots of little flames pop out of the top of the tube. When a sound is fed through the tube, the flames height is altered because of the vibrations in the tube, creating a nice wave of the sound fed through the tube. The flames that are low are called “nodes”, and the ones that stretch out higher than originally are called “antinodes”. Keep that in mind when watching.

But, what happens when you create a plane of these tubes, and then feed some sounds through it? And on top of that, what happens when you put music through it? Just watch to find out, but I’ll give you a hint: it’s pretty dang cool.