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A hit on a rock is usually accompanied by a dull sound, sometimes click, but not ringing. However, the ringing stones in nature exist: in the US state of Pennsylvania, Bucks County, There is a 128-acre ringing cliff park. Lying here giant boulders are truly unique: if by any of hit them with a hammer, the stone will ring like a bell.
The amazing properties of ringing stones
American settlers in the 18th century learned about this phenomenon from Indians. The ringing that stones make is so specific that boulders seem metallic and hollow. For many years this is a strange phenomenon. remains an unsolvable mystery to geologists and scientists. Over the stones experimented more than once, but the cause of what was happening was never installed.
A photo from open sources
Pennsylvania’s clinking cliffs are of various sizes and shapes: there are stones resembling a clenched fist, and there are huge uneven blocks weighing several tons. They differ in color from others. rocks consisting of the same lithological material however “silent.” Overall, about thirty percent rings in the Park the rocks.
Remarkable is the fact that the ringing stones retain their “voice” in any conditions. In particular, pieces of such rocks were walled up in concrete wall, however they still continued to ring. Stones hung on a cable, mounted on a concrete pedestal, clamped into a giant turning chuck – they still reproduced their mysterious melody …
A photo from open sources
The shape and size of these stones also do not particularly affect the published ringing by them. The wreckage of the rock sounds the same as she herself, but the “voice” individual stones may vary slightly depending on what place they hit. However, what is most disconcerting is that often one stone may ring while lying nearby the other, apparently not distinguishable from him, is not.
Musical instrument made of ringing stones
In 1890 a musician named JJ Ott gave a concert in Pennsylvania. As one of those present on it claimed, bell-like sounds of the instrument on which he played Ott, outperformed the accompaniment of the brass band. how you probably already understood the instrument of an inventive musician there were stones gathered among clinking rocks.
It is noteworthy that the musical properties of Pennsylvania stones clearly contradict the physical laws determining resonance characteristics of man-made musical instruments, in particular, the same bells.
A photo from open sources
Scientists have not yet been able to tear out the mystery of ringing stones
In 1965 scientists set out to solve this mystery with boulders from the same field from which the stones and Ott. They crushed your find into small parts that are examined under a microscope. The researchers concluded that the stones began to ring due to internal stresses resulting from periodic their stay in dry and wet conditions.
Other scholars, who stated that some of the stones continued to ring even after immersed in a pond or kept in the damp cellar for a long time. Besides of this, from the boulders that were under the sun, only rang third. As you can see, musical stones are in no hurry to open to people your secret …
Stones
