Episode 31: Breaking Glass

The Mythbusters got a good result here but the way they went about it illustrates a common misperception about the human voice. Specifically, they went "full volume" by using a rock singer. Rock and roll singers are generally associated with high volume but it's mostly because they're amplified. That raspy, hairy sound that makes rockers sound so cool is actually incredibly inefficient as all of that noise is outside of the harmonic stack of the fundamental pitch and wouldn't find any resonance in the glass (as it didn't in the singer). An opera singer, like the original myth, would have a much more efficient tone as he/she would be used to filling large concert halls without the benefit of a sound system. It would also have been interesting to see them do a little experimentation with vowels as we make them by altering the relative volume of harmonics above the fundamental tone. It might give an indication of which overtones the crystal favors.

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