The Rock That Rings
Rea,
Have you ever tapped a rock and expected it to make a dull thud? What if I told you there are rocks that ring like bells instead?
In Pennsylvania, there’s a seven-acre field of rocks that do something unexpected — they make music. Strike one with a hammer, and instead of a thud, you hear a clear, bell-like sound. Each rock plays its own note, like keys on a piano.
A doctor named John J. Ott noticed this in 1890 and had an idea. What if he could play songs using these rocks? He picked out rocks that made different notes and set up the world’s first rock concert. With a brass band playing behind him, he stood in front of his collection of boulders and played tunes by hitting them with a hammer. The sound carried so well that people could hear the rock notes over the brass instruments.
Scientists wanted to know why these rocks could sing. In 1965, Richard Faas brought some rocks to his lab to study them. He found out something surprising — when you hit the rocks, they make sounds too low for human ears to hear. The musical notes we hear happen when these low sounds mix together, like ingredients in a recipe creating something new.
Here’s something odd: only one out of every three rocks in the field can make music. And if you break a musical rock into pieces, the pieces stay quiet. It’s like each musical rock has an invisible rubber band stretched inside it — break it, and the magic stops.
The park now has rules about the rocks. You can bring a hammer and play them like Dr. Ott did, but you can’t take them home. Some people say the rocks stop ringing if you move them, but that’s not true — the rule just makes sure there are always enough musical rocks for everyone to try.
Maybe the next rock you pick up could be hiding a song inside. You never know what ordinary things might turn out to be not so ordinary after all.
Love, Abba
P.S. Want to hear more rock music? Check out the Musical Stones of Skiddaw in England, or the Đàn đá in Vietnam — it’s a whole musical instrument made from rocks!
