Two questions on sound/music and plant electrophysiology

[gustard33]

Hello there,

I am considereing a phd combining sound art with Biology. I have however a couple of questions. Firstly the experiments that showed plants responded differently to music by different people . Is this experiment backed up, duplicated ? Or is it pseudo science ? There are however other well researched studioes that do show plants respond to sound, (namely 5000hz/50000hz) - What is the mechanism that plants use to respond to sound ?

 

 

Second issue :

 

Plant electrophysiology - is this pseudoscience or is there definately minute electrical signals in plants ?

 

any info/links/advice/papers in this area would be much appreciated,

Cheers,

Gus

[skyhook]

I'm just speculating...

I'm thinking it is the frequency of the sound that effect plant growth. When you are near a speaker, you can feel the bass sounds on your skin, but the higher pitch sounds is not so much. Very high frequency energies can pass right through a person is it ? like the frequencies used in ultrasounds and handphones. back to the bass sounds, so the speaker caused vibrations in the air, and we feel the sound waves on the skin. The plant may feel it too, like being physically pushed, or the vibrations agitate some molecules, maybe soil nutrients or plant fluids. This could have resulted in better growth. However, I don't know if the power of the frequency sources are the same ,will the effects on plants be the same.

 

Some studies that I've heard is on music on plant growth, like classical music , rock and pop music , which is a combination of tones. However, I didn't hear about one that is on pure frequency tones. Most likely there are some. I wrote this without Googling up on the topic.

 

 

second issue. Yes, I think there is electrical signal in plants.