Breaking glass with voice

An opera singer hits a high note and this shatters a glass in the drawing room. This may have appeared in the movies, but is it really possible to shatter glass with sound? Yes, but this is harder than you might think. To do it reliably for a science demonstration requires practice and careful choice of the glass and loudspeaker. It is quite nerve racking doing this live on stage, because it sometimes takes a bit of fiddling and tuning to work. This is great for building tension in the audience!

By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Cookie Policy , Privacy Policy , and our Terms of Service. Physics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for active researchers, academics and students of physics. It only takes a minute to sign up. From what I've learned, reaching the natural frequency of glass is not hard for human voice, the real problem is the volume, and many experiments just had to amplify the voice in order to get a positive result while very few others succeeded just by natural means if you will. Other important factors that were mentioned: the thickness of the glass I read that it's even easier if it's a crystalline material and the presence of imperfections, such as micro-fractures inside it. There are just two requirements, 1 correct frequency , and 2 sufficient amplitude.

A human voice can shatter a glass. Every object has a resonant frequency — the natural frequency at which something vibrates. Wine glasses, because of their hollow shape, are particularly resonant.

How to Break a Glass with Your Voice. Thanks to a clever commercial that aired in the s, the image of singers shattering glass with their voice alone has. At one time or another, most of us have seen a cartoon in which an opera singer uses her powerful voice to shatter glass. But can a human being really do that?.