kinetic chime
Swing the cradle. Catch the light. Ring the note.
Lift a bead and let it fall. It swings down, strikes the row, and the far bead kicks out exactly as far as the one you lifted. Newton worked this out a long time ago and it has been sitting on desks ever since.
more about kinetic chime
Here the cradle also plays. Every gap the swing crosses is a note, so one release is not a single sound but a run of them, and the run gets longer the further you lift.
Lift one, two or three beads and the physics changes accordingly, because three beads carry three beads of momentum and the row answers differently.
The bars are made of something, and what they are made of is audible. Chrome, brass, copper, obsidian and cut glass each ring with a different decay, so changing the material changes the instrument rather than the paint. There are tunings to sit under them as well.
Each swing you start earns a Drop, and the strikes that follow earn nothing, so a cradle left ringing on its own pays no more than it did the moment you let go.
There is no goal. Lift, release, listen to it run down, and lift again when the room goes quiet. It runs in the browser with nothing to download and works offline once loaded.
questions
How do you play Kinetic Chime?
Drag any ball aside and let go. Lift two or three at once and the same number swings out the far side, because the physics is real rather than an animation. Press the catch button, or S, to stop it dead.
Why does it sound like a tune?
Each gap between the balls is tuned to a different note, so momentum travelling down the line rings them in order and one swing plays a run. Balls resting against each other are silent, because nothing is being struck.
Does the material change anything?
It changes the shine and the ring together. Brass sustains long and warm, obsidian is short and dark, cut glass is nearly pure. None of it changes how the cradle swings.
how it’s built
nothing you hear is a recordingEvery pop, snap, whir and chime in dopa is made in your browser at the moment you cause it. Here is why, what it costs, and how a few of them work.a Newton’s cradle that plays musicLift a ball, let it go, and the far one kicks out. In kinetic chime nothing scripts that. It comes from five pendulums and a single rule for how they collide.more like this
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