Sand on a Vibrating Plate (Sophie Germain)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Scatter sand
on a metal plate

Draw a bow
across the edge

The plate vibrates
The sand migrates
to the places
where the vibration
cancels itself

The sand collects
at the nodal lines
and the nodal lines
form a pattern
and the pattern
is a portrait
of the frequency

She solved the equation
that predicts
what the sand will do
before you
vibrate the plate

[Chorus]
She signed the paper
Monsieur Le Blanc

Because the Academy
did not accept
mathematics
from a woman's name

The equations
did not know
who wrote them

The equations
were correct
regardless
of the signature

But the signature
was the door
and the door
was locked
and Monsieur Le Blanc
was the key
she carved
from a name
that was not hers

The vibrating plate
does not ask
who scattered the sand

It vibrates
The sand obeys
The pattern forms

She understood this
better than
the Academy
understood her

[Verse 2]
Your cochlea
does the same thing

Sound enters the ear
and the basilar membrane
vibrates
at different positions
for different frequencies

High frequencies
at the base
Low frequencies
at the apex

The membrane
decomposes
a complex wave
into its components
the way she
decomposed
the vibrating plate
into its eigenmodes

She was doing
with ink
what your ear
does with bone

[Final Chorus]
She won the prize

She did not
attend the ceremony
because a woman
at a ceremony
for Monsieur Le Blanc
would have been
a scandal
larger
than the mathematics

She saved
the life
of the greatest
mathematician
in Germany
by writing
to a general
during the invasion
and asking him
to spare
a specific house

The general
spared the house
because the letter
was from
Monsieur Le Blanc
and Monsieur Le Blanc
had credibility

Her name
could not save
a mathematician

His name
could

Vibration
does not care
who started it

Sand does not care
who scattered it

Only the Academy
cared
and the Academy
was wrong
and the Eiffel Tower
is standing
on her math

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