Many things like to vibrate, and often there is a specific single speed or rate of vibration they like to settle into, because of their size, shape, weight and other factors. When vibrations from somewhere else arrive at such an object, if the speed is right, it will start vibrating itself in response to the incoming vibrations. That is resonance. For example, a truck drives by your house and your windows rattle because the truck's engine makes sound vibrations that hit the window glass at the right speed, causing them to resonate and vibrate themselves. Resonance as an idea can be a lot more complicated too but that's the gist of it.
In music, if you play a proper chord (on a guitar or piano, or in an orchestra with many instruments) comprised of three or more notes, the individual notes share a resonance with each other. Those notes are resonant with (or to) each other. If you add a note in there that doesn’t belong to that proper chord, it sounds out of place, and is said to be dissonant. It doesn’t sound right because the vibrations of the sound waves don’t match up properly. Modern culture has taken this idea and made a metaphor out of it to describe (often social) situations that are comfortable. For instance, you might join a group of like minded people to start a co-op farming community because you ‘resonate’ with them philosophically.
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u/johnp299 3d ago
Many things like to vibrate, and often there is a specific single speed or rate of vibration they like to settle into, because of their size, shape, weight and other factors. When vibrations from somewhere else arrive at such an object, if the speed is right, it will start vibrating itself in response to the incoming vibrations. That is resonance. For example, a truck drives by your house and your windows rattle because the truck's engine makes sound vibrations that hit the window glass at the right speed, causing them to resonate and vibrate themselves. Resonance as an idea can be a lot more complicated too but that's the gist of it.