Acoustic Levitation: Riding a Sound Wave

JRT – February 26, 2026

 Sound or acoustic levitation experiments are frequent and continuous. Sound waves have been used by dozens of researchers to move and levitate liquid droplets and tiny particles. To produce various frequencies and move an acoustic field with particles trapped inside, several vibrating plates are utilized.

Large or heavy objects have not been lifted using the developed techniques. The possibility of such a thing is still unknown to scientists in the twenty-first century.

However, there have been some notable advances that raise the possibility that large-scale acoustic levitation could one day be achievable.

Every day you are surrounded by sound, unless you venture into the void of space. However, you probably don't consider it to be a physical presence most of the time. You don't touch the sounds you hear. Loud nightclubs, cars with window-rattling speakers, and kidney stone-pulverizing ultrasound machines might be the only exceptions. Even so, you probably consider what you experience to be the vibrations that sound causes in other objects rather than sound itself.