The elements, we have learned to identify them by their image. By their smell too, for some. A researcher offers us today to discover the noise they make.
Chemists know this well. Elements absorb and emit light at wavelengths specific to them. Forming spectra that allow them to be identified. Spectra which gave the idea to a researcher from the University of Indiana (United States) to see – or rather to listen – what it could give if they were converted into music in a new exercise of what scientists call sonification. His work was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.
This has already been attempted in the past in a rudimentary way. Walker Smith, he wanted to better account for the complexity and nuances of the spectra of each of the elements of the periodic table. He developed computer code that converts light data into note blends. The wavelengths of each color there become individual sine waves whose frequency corresponds to that of the light, and the amplitude to the luminosity of this light. With a few adaptations to allow human ears to always remain sensitive to it.
The music of chemistry
Result: the simplest elements, such as hydrogen (H) or helium (He) sound a bit like chords. Others are played from a collection of more complex sounds. Calcium (Ca), for example, rings like bells at a rate resulting from how the frequencies interact with each other. Zinc, with its large number of colors, sounds like “an angelic choir singing a major chord with vibrato”.
For Walker Smith, the next step will be to create an interactive musical periodic table that would allow you to select an element and at the same time see, in real time, a display of its visible light spectrum and listen to the associated sound. He has already recorded a show built from the sound composed of large molecules. And beyond its artistic aspect, the researcher suggests that his work could help in the teaching of chemistry