page_title: Ernst Chladni
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Ernst Chladni / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing showing how vibrations are excited in a Chladni plate with a violin bow to create the sand figures of nodal lines called Chladni figures, from an 1879 textbook on acoustics. A metal plate vibrating at resonance is divided into separate regions vibrating in opposite directions bounded by lines of zero vibration called nodal lines. A plate can have many different vibration modes, each with a different pattern of nodal lines. German physicist and musician Ernst Chladni discovered around 1787 that these nodal lines could be made visible by sprinkling sand on a metal plate and exciting vibrations in it by drawing a violin bow across the edge, as shown. The sand collects along the nodal lines where the surface is stationary; the resulting patterns are called Chladni figures. One is visible on the surface. The image also illustrates how different vibrational modes can be excited by touching the plate in different places with the free hand while bowing. Alterations to image: none.
context_page_description: Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni was a German physicist and musician. His most important work, for which he is sometimes labeled the father of acoustics, included research on vibrating plates and the calculation of the speed of sound for different gases. He also undertook pioneering work in the study of meteorites and is regarded by some as the father of meteoritics.
context_section_description: Although Chladni was born in Wittenberg in Saxony, his family originated from Kremnica, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary and today a mining town in central Slovakia. Chladni has therefore been identified as German, Hungarian and Slovak.
  Chladni came from an educated family of academics and learned men. Chladni's great-grandfather, the Lutheran clergyman Georg Chladni (1637–92), had left Kremnica in 1673 during the Counter Reformation. Chladni's grandfather, Martin Chladni (1669–1725), was also a Lutheran theologian and, in 1710, became professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg. He was dean of the theology faculty in 1720–1721 and later became the university's rector. Chladni's uncle, Justus Georg Chladni (1701–1765), was a law professor at the university.
  Another uncle, Johann Martin Chladni (1710–1759), was a theologian, a historian and a professor at the University of Erlangen and the University of Leipzig. 
  Chladni's father, Ernst Martin Chladni (1715–1782), was a law professor and rector of the University of Wittenberg. He had joined the law faculty there in 1746. Chladni's mother was Johanna Sophia and he was an only child. His father disapproved of his son's interest in science and insisted that Chladni become a lawyer.
caption: Chladni's method of creating Chladni figures
exif: {}