Square Waves and more pseudo healing?

[Trinoc]

A square wave may be analysable into a set of sine waves (as is any other repetitive waveform), but that is not how square waves are generated. You generate a square wave by simply switching between two voltages at regular intervals. Any computer is full of such square waves, none of which will have been synthesised from sine waves.

Resonance, on the other hand, is a sine wave phenomenon, so any talk about "square wave resonance" is almost certainly baloney. A simple object like a flute can resonate with almost a pure sine wave. A complex object such as a square of metal on a pillar, bowed like a violin, can resonate in several modes simultaneously. I suppose you could devise an object whose compound modes approximated a square wave, but an arbitrary object like a bacterium or virus isn't going to do anything like that.

Being in a liquid medium, bacteria and viruses are far too heavily damped to exhibit any noticeable resonance, but even if they did the frequency for something that small would be very high and any device emitting it as a square wave would probably violate radio interference laws.

You can get resonance, as in an MRI machine, but this occurs at the nuclear level and is not specific to any type of virus, bacterium or whatever. If an MRI machine put enough energy into the nuclei to have any lasting effect, the patient would probably cook.

[Mulder]

If you stimulate an object with a square wave, shouldn't it resonate anyway but as a sine wave? If so, I can't see why they are making a fuss about square waves unless they are simply easier to produce or the people want to make it sound more obscure.

Some people discuss the problem of using square waves to produce resonance, in an electric circuit, here.

[ajrmoore]

A square wave may be analysable into a set of sine waves (as is any other repetitive waveform), but that is not how square waves are generated. You generate a square wave by simply switching between two voltages at regular intervals. Any computer is full of such square waves, none of which will have been synthesised from sine waves.

Resonance, on the other hand, is a sine wave phenomenon, so any talk about "square wave resonance" is almost certainly baloney. A simple object like a flute can resonate with almost a pure sine wave. A complex object such as a square of metal on a pillar, bowed like a violin, can resonate in several modes simultaneously. I suppose you could devise an object whose compound modes approximated a square wave, but an arbitrary object like a bacterium or virus isn't going to do anything like that.

Being in a liquid medium, bacteria and viruses are far too heavily damped to exhibit any noticeable resonance, but even if they did the frequency for something that small would be very high and any device emitting it as a square wave would probably violate radio interference laws.

You can get resonance, as in an MRI machine, but this occurs at the nuclear level and is not specific to any type of virus, bacterium or whatever. If an MRI machine put enough energy into the nuclei to have any lasting effect, the patient would probably cook.

That's all particularly relevant and very interesting Trinoc. I stand corrected regarding the method by which square waves are created by eletrical components. Surely this doesn't apply to acoustic square waves however? Since there are no voltages to switch between one would have to generate a acoustic square wave by building frequencies upon one another? (An unrelated point to the main discussion, mainly for my own interest)

I've read other threads covering BRT in the past and have never heard the following, which you mention:

1. Resonance is an exclusively sine wave phenomenon.

I had no idea that this was the case. In which case, as Mulder says, why bother mentioning sine waves. It seems like a blatant attempt to make it sound more obscure and consequently exotic.

2. Being in a liquid medium, bacteria and viruses are far too heavily damped to exhibit any noticeable resonance, but even if they did the frequency for something that small would be very high and any device emitting it as a square wave would probably violate radio interference laws.

I'm a little confused about this point. Bear with me if I'm being obtuse: So, if bateria produced any kind of resonance at all, would it not be a vibrating/electrical resonance rather than an acoustic resonance? Therefore, if one were to try and match the baterium's own resonance (following the methodology of BRT), then one would use similar vibrational/electrical frequencies, not acoustic/radio frequencies? If so you wouldn't be transmitting at a very high frequency and wouldn't be violating radio interference laws. Shout at me if my assumptions are grossly inaccurate

3. Interesting point about the MRI. Completely skipped my mind that it stands for Magnetic Resonance Imagery and in effect could techincally be used to target nuclei in general (making it useless for localised resonance targeting [if there is such a thing] of bacteria). But, as you say, the energy/frequency needed to do so would, to say the least, be a little unhealthy.

Do you have any sources for any of your information? Would be great to have a read seeing as how my knowledge is obviously lacking in certain parts of this topic.

[Matt]

That's all particularly relevant and very interesting Trinoc. I stand corrected regarding the method by which square waves are created by eletrical components. Surely this doesn't apply to acoustic square waves however? Since there are no voltages to switch between one would have to generate a acoustic square wave by building frequencies upon one another? (An unrelated point to the main discussion, mainly for my own interest)

Throw an square wave generate by rapid switching at a speaker and you'll get the closest approximation you'll get to an acoustic squarewave. I can't think how it would be done otherwise.

[Mulder]

Regarding resonance in a fluid. For electric currents to produce such an effect, they first must hit the bloodstream. If the frequency is high, the currents are more likely to travel around the surface of the body than go through it.

If the current DOES reach the bloodstream, it might affect cells in a process similar to electrophoresis. Even if you could demonstrate resonance in a sample of blood in a lab, there's no guarantee the same thing would happen in the moving bloodstream in the body.

I'd be interested to know if they have ever demonstrated an exploding virus!

[Trinoc]

Sorry for delay in replying ... been involved in DIY around the house ... a rare impulse which might not return for years if I don't give in to it now!

1. Resonance is an exclusively sine wave phenomenon.

I had no idea that this was the case. In which case, as Mulder says, why bother mentioning sine waves. It seems like a blatant attempt to make it sound more obscure and consequently exotic.

I suppose I may have overstated my point a bit. Resonance is generally defined in terms of an object responding to sine wave excitation, and I can't think of any situation where using anything other then a sine wave would help. I suppose if you knew all of the resonant frequencies of something like a Chladni Plate then you could excite it with sound made up of a mixture of sine waves at these frequencies -- I've never tried it.

Thinking about it, the resonating object could vibrate with something other than a pure sine wave. I'm thinking of something like a mechanical object with a non-linear restoring force relative to the displacement -- say, a ruler twanged over the edge of a table.

2. Being in a liquid medium, bacteria and viruses are far too heavily damped to exhibit any noticeable resonance, but even if they did the frequency for something that small would be very high and any device emitting it as a square wave would probably violate radio interference laws.

I'm a little confused about this point. Bear with me if I'm being obtuse: So, if bateria produced any kind of resonance at all, would it not be a vibrating/electrical resonance rather than an acoustic resonance? Therefore, if one were to try and match the baterium's own resonance (following the methodology of BRT), then one would use similar vibrational/electrical frequencies, not acoustic/radio frequencies? If so you wouldn't be transmitting at a very high frequency and wouldn't be violating radio interference laws. Shout at me if my assumptions are grossly inaccurate

As far as I know, if a molecule responds at all to an applied electric field then it does so by mechanical vibration. My instinctive feeling is that an attempt to vibrate a whole bacterium or virus then it would dissipate so much of the vibrational energy into the medium (mostly water) that it would be seriously damped -- possibly even over-critically damped, i.e. effectively suppressing vibration altogether. Imagine pinging a tuning fork and then holding it under water -- I don't think it would keep vibrating for long -- and in that case the metal of the fork is a lot stiffer than water, whereas a bacterium or virus if presumably a rather floppy object.

This is a gut feeling of mine. I have no direct experience with applying sound or electrical waves to biological systems so maybe there are others here better qualified to say whether I am right or not.

I think the bottom line is that I can't think of any way that a specific type of bacterium or virus could have a particular resonant frequency that could be targeted, even if it was sufficiently under-damped to allow a noticeable resonance to occur. It just seems like so much New Age baloney to me.

Do you have any sources for any of your information? Would be great to have a read seeing as how my knowledge is obviously lacking in certain parts of this topic.

I don't have any links immediately to hand. I can only suggest searching Wikipedia etc. What I am saying is based on 40 years on the computer and electronics fields (some basic chemistry, no biology).

Not being in the medical field like a lot of people here, I don't normally look for peer-reviewed double-blind studies to decide whether a circuit or program works or not!

[Trinoc]

Throw an square wave generate by rapid switching at a speaker and you'll get the closest approximation you'll get to an acoustic squarewave. I can't think how it would be done otherwise.

Speaker manufacturers and auditorium designers apparently use transient excitation to test the responses of their speakers/rooms. I've seen it suggested that a transient response is all you need to get all of the information about the response. I'd be skeptical about believing I'd get beautiful sound from a speaker or room that had never actually had real music played, but that's what I've been told.

To get a transient sound to test out an auditorium space I would think you'd need a very rapid discharge of energy. An explosion would be a bit drastic, but maybe a spark. Putting a transient through a speaker would add the speaker's response to that of the room, which would confuse the issue, but I suppose that could be factored out. No doubt the ways real acoustic engineers use to test these things are a lot more sophisticated than the simplified stuff the rest of us might read about in hifi mags etc.

[Mulder]

Resonance is generally defined in terms of an object responding to sine wave excitation, and I can't think of any situation where using anything other then a sine wave would help.

Although the resonance itself will be a sine wave, I don't see why the forcing wave needs to be. A square wave, whichever way it is generated, can be seen as a fundamental wave and its main harmonics, so the resonator can react to any of these components.

I don't see why a square is needed here, though, other than to obfuscate.

As far as I know, if a molecule responds at all to an applied electric field then it does so by mechanical vibration.

A vibrating molecule heats up, as seen in microwave ovens! I'm guessing the idea behind this device is similar only for viruses and bacteria. Even if it works, can the machine distinguish between harmfull and harmless bacteria and other cells in the body?

[ChrisOfNottingham]

New post on old thread but I'm new to the forum so it's allowed.

I was a digital electronic engineer for many years so perhaps I can add something to this, although the whole unit is almost certainly a scam.

Resonance is defined in terms of a frequency. By definition that means a sine wave. Anything that has a resonance exhibits sinusoidal (sine wave like) behaviour.

Wave forms of other shapes can be mathematically shown to be composed out of various sine waves added together, its the law. Square waves are (mathematically) composed of an infinite series of odd harmonics (multiples of the original), where the level of each harmonic is less than the previous one.

In practice, to make a square wave you don't add sine waves. Logic circuits for instance only have two output voltages, often referred to as 0 and 1, or high and low. So if you set up a circuit which just flicks between these two levels at a fixed rate, you get a square wave. This is trivially simple compared to adding sine waves. We would still refer to this rate as the circuit's frequency. This is allowed because it is the frequency that the circuit operates at ie so many flips per second. But mathematically (and even actually!) it contains many other higher frequencies too.

The seemingly gobbledy-gook explanation given in the product notes was actually a ridiculously over explained 'cook book' circuit for making a crystal controlled square wave generator, like you get in a watch for instance. It's actually pretty normal stuff.

I suppose the idea is that because square waves are composed of an infinite series of sine waves, then whatever the natural frequency of a virus is, there will be some component near that frequency. If viruses do have a natural frequency then this must be true, although there can be a big difference between being near and being the same in the world of resonance.

One problem with this method of pinging viruses however is that while the square wave is composed of an infinite series of frequencies, it is at ever decreasing levels, namely 1/3 at 3 times the frequency, 1/5 at 5 times the frequency and so on. So by the time you get to the super high frequencies that would be associated with a tiny thing like a virus, there would be almost no signal left.

The fact that it doesn't appear to destroy other bigger parts of cells etc also indicates that there is just no mechanism for this to work.