I’m fascinated by the youtube videos of “the spike” where circular waves can be used to create a pressure spike that asymptotes at the center, example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWKFPTgkpXo

In my mind, this makes sense for an essentially 2d scenario…but why can’t it be expanded to 3d? Could you do this with gasses? Could you make some theoretical spherical chamber with, as an over-simplification, soccer-ball shaped pistons to create some asymptotically high pressure spike at the center? Could you modify parameters like piston extension distance, chamber radius, and temperature to create conditions to generate things like crystals found in the earth, like those industrial diamond making machines? Does creating asymptotically high pressures momentarily reduce the complexity of chambers needed to withstand those pressures, as the pressures near the outside would be much lower? Heck, could you create conditions wild enough at the center to bring things like fusion into range of ignition with supplemental lasers or something?

I want to play with this idea by throwing some numbers around and simulating, but this kind of thing is totally new to me and I wouldn’t know where to start to explore this curiosity. Is there any place for someone to do some beginner physics simulating?

  • kersplooshM
    2•3 days ago

    Cool video. That’s an interesting demonstration of wave interaction. It’s just a phased array with all the sources pointed inward at each other. You could do the same thing in air with an array of speakers. I can’t imagine air would work to create the kinds of temperatures and pressures required to make diamonds, though.

    There are engineering/physics software packages that can simulate wave interactions like this. Here are phased array examples using COMSOL, and MatLab. You might be able to approximate the behavior in a FEA or CFD tool, too. Setting up the model is not a trivial exercise, though.

    Your idea of arranging energy sources in a sphere, focusing their energy inward toward the center, reminds me of implosion-type nuclear weapons. That’s basically how they work.