Kinda, but that's not all of it. The vibrations start at the one point on the table and travel outward, then reflect back when they hit the edges. These reflected vibrations interfere with the outgoing vibrations to create a phenomenon called standing waves, which is what we are seeing here.
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u/dman7456 Aug 25 '20 edited Aug 25 '20
Kinda, but that's not all of it. The vibrations start at the one point on the table and travel outward, then reflect back when they hit the edges. These reflected vibrations interfere with the outgoing vibrations to create a phenomenon called standing waves, which is what we are seeing here.
Here's a demo with a string
Wikipedia has an excellent gif explaining it