When I started watching this video I had to check that it wasn’t April 1st, and it isn’t. So I guess this is real. Some clever chaps and chapesses at Tokyo University are currently working out how to make things levitate and move in 3D space using sound manipulation. When I say working it out, they have actually worked it out. Yoichi Ochiai at Tokyo University is a sound manipulator extraordinaire.
Scientists can suspend things using sound-waves already, but only in a 2D plane. This new technique “levitates and moves particles three-dimensionally by localised ultrasonic standing waves, which are generated by ultrasonic phased arrays.”
I don’t really understand what I just copied and pasted into that last paragraph, but the video has some nice diagrams to help out.
Perhaps I will finally get my hover board after all?
Here’s another video by Yoichi Ochiai, if anything it’s even cooler would you believe?
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