Good Vibrations?

It turns out that the whole world wobbles. Everything has a natural frequency - the rate at which it moves when disturbed - be it a cup of tea, a building or a human organ. Even more incredibly, if an external force matches an object's natural frequency, it causes it to absorb that energy and vibrate with increasingly large waves; and that can have consequences, from helping a spider find its lunch to making a bridge collapse. On the trail of good and bad vibes and everything in between, Hannah and Dara investigate whether the famous 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the USA was really down to resonance, explore examples of resonance in nature, and find out what this mysterious vibration can do to the human body: from the pressures of repetitive tractor-driving, to absorbing the reverberations of certain instruments... To submit your question to the Curious Cases team, please email: curiouscases@bbc.co.uk Contributors: - Helen Czerski, Professor of Physics at University College London - Wanda Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering at Warwick University - Phillip Moxley, Senior Research Associate at the University of Southampton - Sana Bokhari, sound therapy practitioner Producers: Lucy Taylor & Emily Bird Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem A BBC Studios Audio Production

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Good Vibrations? is an episode from The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry by BBC.

This episode is 28:34 long.

This episode was published on Oct 17, 2025.

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