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Well, the promises of money and pastries
from lewisgirl, Dog Ed and UnaBubba
were too tempting, so here we go... (and
thanks to Dog Ed for the name)
As my annotation said these
are: "...eerily silent battery powered
windchimes" - "They look like normal
windchimes but are fitted with
sensors
which detect when one chime is about to
hit another and which cause one of the
chimes to take avoiding action. If the
wind is blowing fairly strongly you'd see
the chimes dance around desperately
avoiding each other."
beauxeault
and Dog Ed made the very good point
that you might be able to make them
dodge each other by making them
magnets of the same polarity.
UnaBubba's doubts ("I'm not sure
whether magnets would work, unless
each whole tube was a magnet. Can you
get annular magnets 18" long?") make
me suspect that empirical tests are
needed to validate this theory...
Battery Powered Wind Chimes
http://www.halfbake...red_20Wind_20Chimes
[hippo, Aug 08 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004]
(?) You can certainly get very large annular magnets.
http://dbserv.ihep....ubs/about/sh1-e.htm
'The weight of its annular magnet was a mere 2.5 thousand tons instead of the 35 thousand in the conventional model' [angel, Aug 08 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Global Zen MIDI
http://www.halfbake...Global_20Zen_20MIDI
Not really relevant to the dodgy chimes, but inspired by the discussion. [beauxeault, Aug 08 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004]
(?) Hippo's Silent Dodgy Chimes
http://www.lindablo...ash/windchimes.html
I'm teaching myself Flash at the moment, so here are the dodgy chimes, implemented in Flash. The avoidance techniques aren't perfect yet, so they do collide sometimes...
[22/Aug/07 - link mended] [hippo, Oct 04 2004, last modified Aug 22 2007]
More chimes
http://www.halfbake...eremin_20Windchimes
Also inspired by the discussion here. [egbert, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
Hippo's Dodgy Chinese Pool/Snooker Balls
http://www.halfbake...l_2fSnooker_20Balls
Yet another spawn of this classic. And the second one from me. [beauxeault, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
(?) Fishbone wind-chime
http://www.theorigi...en-GB&product=61150
(In case you're short of fishbones.) [angel, Oct 19 2004]
Archived copy of the "very large annular magnet" linked page above
https://web.archive...ubs/about/sh1-e.htm
But I'm guessing that's a superconducting electromagnet, not a permanent magnet. Also, that might be the first time I've ever tried to load a page from a .su (Soviet Union) domain. Do any of those still exist? [notexactly, Jul 18 2019]
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Croissant, as promised. For typical Halfbakery over-engineered-ness, proximity sensors could activate electromagnets to repel each chime in the correct direction, and a LED could light up to let you know that a collision had been averted. |
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I have croissanted! Please put me on the mailing list, whoever bakes this.
(((really don't want to say this because will seem uncharitable, hence the lots of brackets to simulate small font... could you put a 'p' into 'deserately' please hippo?))) |
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Hmm... I'm also not too sure about the magnet theory either, although admittedly I've not touched anything remotely like physics since my GSCE's. Still, I always like unusual objet's d'art and gadgets and junk so what jam/jelly would you like with your croissant? |
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(((lewisgirl - spelling disaster rectified))) |
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Hmmm! I like! Do you think that the same technology could be used with children? |
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Yay! I really want to see one in action. |
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Well done, hippo. Enjoy your flakey bread product. |
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Maybe one of the models could be designed so that
whenever a chime came close to another it said "oops!" or
"pardon me" or "make way!" or something of that nature. |
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I dunno, dodgy would be more like "whew" or "no comment" or " that was close" or of course nothing said at all. |
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following on from ['wax]: if you want to make it really dodgy they could say "Awright geezer!" as they pass. |
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I'm afraid I've got to come out of the closet, though - I'm rather partial to windchimes. I love listening to the random melodies (no tume, no rhythm) that they generate while I sit out on a long summer evening with a beer in my hand (beer optional, hand mandatory). It's pleasing in a kind of gentle meditative way. |
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Battery powered wind chimes - bad. |
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Silent avoiding windchimes (that do not flash LEDs, say "Awright geezer" - or anything else) - good.
As long as they avoided each other in long, lazy sweeping motions I imagine that the experience would be a visual equivalent of listening to windchimes anyway. |
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Would using an electrical charge rather than magnets eliminate the problem with overlarge mganets? |
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Actually, I think this could be baked without magnets.
Modify some regular windchimes by drilling holes at the bottom of each chime and thread fishing line from bottom to opposite end of clanker or whatchacallit as well as from bottom of chime to top of nearby chimes thru and thru... knot as necessary.
I think knotting the chimes at base to each one next to it would be cheating and obvious - wouldn't have morph qualities either. |
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That would be the 'AfroAssault' model. |
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It'd serve them right for buying one of the most annoying products ever (real windchimes, not Hippo's ones). |
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I dislike the high-pitched metal ones too. I have a set of bamboo ones that sound about the same...a quiet 'bonk', rather than a dog-head-exploding 'TING!'... |
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Angel, re link: Egad. I think the house those chimes hung from would be blown away long before the chimes made tink-one... |
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What about wind chimes... with coated with reactive armor. A gentle breeze will set the wind chimes into motion and WHAMO! Ka-Balmo! KARASH! BOOM! Add magnesium powder for really special effects... |
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A variation: Each chime would constantly emit a quiet hum (well, "hum" is the wrong word--more like a sampled Gregorian chant sound, tuned so that, together, they would sound appropriately minor-keyish). As the wind picked up and each chime came into (some preset) proximity of each other they would hum proportionately louder and perhaps change tune slightly. As they returned to their neutral positions they would return to their normal tone and volume. Maybe if they touched, they would briefly brighten the sound.
On reflection, maybe this (my variation) is a really stupid idea and Hippo's silent dodgy is best left as is. |
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Or randomly wired into your household electrical system,
so various lights and appliances would turn on and off as
the chimes swung and dodged each other. |
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Or, each avoided collision prompts software to select a phone number at random and dial it, hanging up after one ring. Each individual chime would generate a phone call in a unique country or on a unique continent. The result would be a kind of zen chime. It's ringing, but if you can't hear the sounds, are you really out of the woods? |
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Which gives me an idea... |
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Since no one else has said it yet...normal chimes don't hit each other. They come within a few nanometers before they are forcibly repelled by their outermost electrons. The "tinging" is a result of the individual chimes vibrating to dissipate the aforementioned forces.
That said, portean's method would likely be the way to go, since this already sorta kinda happens naturally. |
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Since the chimes are already battery powered, making them electrical, how about adding a speed-occillating fan to make constant wind even when the real wind has died down? Can't have non-chimes without non-wind to go with them. |
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[nick_n_uit] Thanks for putting us right...
[Rods Tiger] Can we bet online on the future movements of any given chime?| — | hippo,
Aug 13 2001, last modified Aug 17 2001 |
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combine the chimes with a Jacob's Ladder, just keep the kids away. And probably me, too. |
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[waugsqueke] Something about your suggestion of using silent chimes while playing chime noises attarcted me. I'd propose then that the silent chimes should have a mode in which when they nearly hit each other this generates a MIDI output. So you could have chimes apparantly hitting each other, accompanied by deep, reverberating chimes from your hi-fi. |
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...or from someone else's telephone? Maybe not. Voice-throwing chimes are quite good, though. |
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Or a nearby housepet or something...Chimes dodge, and the cat goes 'BONG'...That would be wild... |
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I don't think the magnets would work that well as chimes. Magnets don't have a very clear ring to them. The TCP/IP enabled electronic voice-throwing wind chimes rock, though. I want to see this on candid camera sometime. |
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Anybody know who, where, what were the worlds largest wind chimes? I think it would be great to make a huge wind chime (30 foot long tubes, for example). Maybe bigger. Hang them between the Petronas Towers. |
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Bravo! Applause all round first for the idea, the annotations and the animation. Cheered up a dodgy afternoon. And given me an idea too. Back in a mo... |
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hip, hip, hippo! Superb idea. I would applaud, but it would probably be more fitting if my hands just narrowly avoided each other repeatedly. |
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Folks, there should be no electricity at all needed for this idea. They make permanent magnets pretty strong these days, and some simple bar magnets (actually hollow tubes for lightness) will do the trick just fine, of avoiding each other. Just hang them all with the North end up and the South end down (or vice-versa), and they will all magnetically repel each other. The only caveat is that they all have to be the same length and hang at the same "level", relative to each other. --Well, some slight differences might be workable, from one chime to the next. But you have to make sure no North magnetic pole can get close to any South magnetic pole. |
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One potential issue with magnets. Depending on the length
of
the strings, the overall width of the windchime, and the
strength of the wind, it might be possible for the bottom
end
of one magnet to find the top end of another. |
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A better option might be to use a truly enormous Van der
Graaf generator, and conductive threads supporting the
chimes, to give each element a massive, identical charge.
The advantage of this approach is that it requires a truly
enormous Van der Graaf generator. |
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Wait...you waited 16 years to come up with that comment?
Wowzie Powzie. I'm stunned. |
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I was thinking. And part of the time I was drunk. |
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