Melde's experiment

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Melde's experiment is a scientific experiment carried out in 1859 by the German physicist Franz Melde on the standing waves produced in a tense cable originally set oscillating by a tuning fork, later improved with connection to an electric vibrator. This experiment, "a lecture-room standby",^[1] attempted to demonstrate that mechanical waves undergo interference phenomena. In the experiment, mechanical waves traveled in opposite directions form immobile points, called nodes. These waves were called standing waves by Melde since the position of the nodes and loops (points where the cord vibrated) stayed static.

Standing waves were first discovered by Franz Melde, who coined the term "standing wave" around 1860.^[2][3][4][5] Melde generated parametric oscillations in a string by employing a tuning fork to periodically vary the tension at twice the resonance frequency of the string.^[6]