Why does my walking stick vibrate and hum?

Is it really for walking?

“As it reaches the bottom with its tip, it goes: mmmmm for a few seconds. And I feel it.”

That’s what she said (cue comic trombone wa-wa-waaaaaaaaaaaa)

Maybe it has the same properties that a divining rod has? (the thing they used to find water…)

I’ve also experienced this. It’s because of simple physics.

The force with which you impact the ground travels up the stick letting out a little vibration and hum. You’ll notice, like a tuning fork, the harder you hit the ground, the louder and more sustained the hum is.

Yes. The diving rod makes sense. Because the stick is traveling through frozen water and incredible excited by this. Of course, it means your friend has powerful talent in this direction. Has he/she done anything useful with this skill? Or does he/she simply ramble about wondering at such things?

We do need to know if this stick reacts in the same way if no snow? Because Alfred’s explanation seems to suggest the stick would always vibrate upon striking the ground.

I will convey these GA’s etherically to my neighbor. Thanks fellas ‘n’ gals. I find it a strange perhaps psychotic question.

Welcome to fluther, francesca. “Diving rod” makes a lot of sense in this context…..

Maybe it’s cold!

Take the batteries out of it and see what happens.

I so totally lurve your topics listings. Stick, hum, vibrate, feel it Yes!

And I lurve you, suanne. Always have. Always will. Mmmmmmmm….

There’s a dick joke in here somewhere. Just throwing that out there.

Like “throwing a hotdog down a hallway?” re: cprevite hee hee!

edit: and to answer the question, the answer lies in resonance. The wood (snort) in the stick (pfffft) vibrating (hee hee hee hee!!).

Maybe the snow is just amplifying the vibrations? Maybe try this in a pail of water, would there be a lot of ripples? So the snow is making those vibrations audible…causing moans and groans and other distinctive sounds…
or there was Jed just looking for food, when up from the ground came some bubbling…

I am going to try hiking in a pail of water and will report back on the stick’s action in these new conditions. The mysterious sounds/twitches are absolutely absent when I walk now that the snow is gone. I am ignoring all the dick jokes. Sorry.

@francescadellacruz – They’re dildo jokes. You can feel free to ignore them. But I don’t regret making them.

It could be that the texture of the snow affects the frequency of the vibrations of the stick. Or that the temperature/humidity affects the wood within the stick. If you really want to experiment with this, try different combinations of snow/water/nothing and hot/room/cold temperatures (plus different humidities).

Well I kind of got it that they were dildo jokes. But seriously did not intend to suggest such. The phenomenon was so strange that I really hoped to understand it. I do think shadling21 is on to something..and I think the temp/humidity is part of it because when the snow was deep and fairly dry the vibrations were present every step of the way. After it got mushier, the vibrations were gone or hardly noticable. And I also wonder if this is connecting somehow to what makes water witching work…and I have experienced what happens when you hold the forked stick, the feeling…when I did it, it was so extreme, the pull toward the ground, that my shoulders ached for days. So maybe this all has something to do with ME as well. Thanks.

I’ve never felt that pull towards water. I always thought it was an urban myth. I’ll have to try this stuff out.