High speed video of commonly studied oscillating systems

To allow student visualization of vibrating systems, laboratories and demonstrations have been cleverly designed to include stroboscopes, sand, and cork dust. Sensors in the laboratory are often single point type and must be moved to fully visualize the pattern of a vibrating system. Animations fill in the blanks but are still not real. Standard video recording would be the perfect data gathering and visualization tool except the frame rate is too slow for the most commonly studied oscillating systems. Reasonably priced high speed video cameras provide an alternative. In this paper, simple one and two dimensional vibrating systems (e.g., strings, bars, and membranes) are examined with a camera capable of frame rates up to 16 000 frames per second. Video analysis software is used to strip data from the recordings. More complex oscillating systems are also examined to demonstrate the power of this laboratory tool.