The first time a ginormous roll of bubble wrap arrived in the Adafruit shipping department, a hush fell on the shippers. None of us had ever seen so much bubble tape in one place. For every square of bubble wrap that we used to ship an order, we popped at least one bubble. At times, an entire square was sacrificed in an effort create a syncopated bubble-pop song we yearned for. We did not succeed in turning bubble wrap into a musical instrument, but Simone Giertz and her collaborators did. Here’s more from CDM:
[Simon Giertz’s] own background in engineering physics means she’s got some great insights to share on bubble wrap, but there’s also a deep team of folks to check out who worked on this, including engineer Stu McCConnel and machinist Sami Go. (Yay, collaboration!) See below.
But everything about this is just a joy for fans of mechanical engineering and music and musical instrument history. The resulting design is not entirely unprecedented, either – it’s a bit like they’ve made a barrel organ using bubble wrap.
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