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...-- hippo, Aug 08 2001 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_20MIDINot 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.htmlI'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_20WindchimesAlso 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_20BallsYet 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.htmBut 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] 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.-- angel, Aug 08 2001 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?)))-- lewisgirl, Aug 08 2001 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?-- CoolerKing, Aug 08 2001 (((lewisgirl - spelling disaster rectified)))-- hippo, Aug 08 2001 Hmmm! I like! Do you think that the same technology could be used with children?-- DrBob, Aug 08 2001 Yay! I really want to see one in action.-- Dog Ed, Aug 08 2001 Well done, hippo. Enjoy your flakey bread product.
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.-- PotatoStew, Aug 08 2001 I dunno, dodgy would be more like "whew" or "no comment" or " that was close" or of course nothing said at all.-- thumbwax, Aug 08 2001 following on from ['wax]: if you want to make it really dodgy they could say "Awright geezer!" as they pass.
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.
Battery powered wind chimes - bad.
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.-- st3f, Aug 08 2001 Would using an electrical charge rather than magnets eliminate the problem with overlarge mganets?-- protean, Aug 08 2001 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.-- thumbwax, Aug 09 2001 That would be the 'AfroAssault' model.-- hippo, Aug 09 2001 It'd serve them right for buying one of the most annoying products ever (real windchimes, not Hippo's ones).-- CoolerKing, Aug 09 2001 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!'...
Angel, re link: Egad. I think the house those chimes hung from would be blown away long before the chimes made tink-one...-- StarChaser, Aug 10 2001 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...-- gorn_the_great, Aug 10 2001 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.-- bristolz, Aug 10 2001 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.-- PotatoStew, Aug 10 2001 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?
Which gives me an idea...-- beauxeault, Aug 10 2001 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.-- nick_n_uit, Aug 10 2001 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.-- gentlebard, Aug 11 2001 [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 combine the chimes with a Jacob's Ladder, just keep the kids away. And probably me, too.-- AfroAssault, Aug 16 2001 [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.-- hippo, Aug 17 2001 ...or from someone else's telephone? Maybe not. Voice-throwing chimes are quite good, though.-- angel, Aug 17 2001 Or a nearby housepet or something...Chimes dodge, and the cat goes 'BONG'...That would be wild...-- StarChaser, Aug 18 2001 Anybody bake one yet?-- thumbwax, Feb 12 2002 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.-- RayfordSteele, Mar 22 2002 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.-- phazed, Mar 24 2002 (see link)-- hippo, Dec 01 2002 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...-- egbert, Dec 01 2002 woah!-- thumbwax, Mar 04 2003 hip, hip, hippo! Superb idea. I would applaud, but it would probably be more fitting if my hands just narrowly avoided each other repeatedly.-- lostdog, Mar 04 2003 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.-- Vernon, Sep 11 2003 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.
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.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 18 2019 Wait...you waited 16 years to come up with that comment? Wowzie Powzie. I'm stunned.-- blissmiss, Jul 19 2019 I was thinking. And part of the time I was drunk.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 19 2019 random, halfbakery