"Even if you could excite the cup, that doesn't guarantee it would break. "It's possible, but you have to be both good and lucky," says Jeffrey Kysar, a mechanical engineer at Columbia University who studies the different ways in which materials can fracture and fail. And if she sings loudly enough, the glass will vibrate itself to smithereens. If a person sings the same tone as that ringing note-a high C in legend but in reality the matching pitch could be any note-the sound of her voice will vibrate the air molecules around the glass at its resonant frequency, causing the glass to start vibrating as well. Glass wine goblets are especially resonant because of their hollow tubular shape, which is why they make a pleasant ringing sound when clinked. Every piece of glass has a natural resonant frequency-the speed at which it will vibrate if bumped or otherwise disturbed by some stimulus, such as a sound wave-as does every other material on Earth. Physics suggests that a voice should be able to break glass. The scene is in countless cartoons and comedies, but is this parody based on reality? Can an opera singer really shatter glass? Champagne flutes shatter, monocles crack and the chandelier explodes as the power of her voice wreaks havoc on the concert hall. Her gilded bosom heaves as she inhales, opens her lipsticked maw and lets loose an earthshaking high note. The orchestra crescendos as a woman of ample proportions strides to the front of the stage, blonde braids trailing from under a horned helmet.
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