Shekhar Sarpotdar is presently a Graduate Student, in MMAE department of
IIT, Chicago, USA.

N Ananthkrishnan research interests revolve around the dynamics
and control of nonlinear phenomena in aircraft flight, compressor flows,
liquid slosh, and combustion acoustics.

SD Sharma is Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Bombay
at Mumbai, India. His research interests are in the area of experimental
fluid mechanics, in particular, shear flows, wakes, and turbulence.

The Rijke tube is simply a cylindrical tube with both ends open and a heat source placed inside it. The heat source may be a flame or an electrical heating element. Traditionally, the tube is positioned vertically on a stand (or even in your hand) and the heat source is introduced from below into the tube (Figure 1). For certain ranges of position of the heat source within the tube, the Rijke tube emits a loud sound. This phenomenon was discovered by Rijke around 1850, and is therefore called the Rijke phenomenon. Sound production in the Rijke tube is a classic example of a thermo-acoustic phenomenon1. Thermo-acoustics refers to the creation of sound in a device due to the transfer of energy from a thermal source (e.g., a flame) to acoustic waves set up in the device 2 .

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Address for Correspondence

Shekhar M Sarpotdar,
N Ananthkrishnan and
S D Sharma
Aerodynamics Labs
Department of Aerospace Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology
(Bombay), Powai
Mumbai 400076,India.