The Earthquake Rose

When a magnitude 6.8 earthquake shook Olympia, Wash., in 2001, shop owner Jason Ward discovered that a sand-tracing pendulum had recorded the vibrations in the image above.
Seismologists say that the “flower” at the center reflects the higher-frequency waves that arrived first; the outer, larger-amplitude oscillations record the lower-frequency waves that arrived later.
“You never think about an earthquake as being artistic — it’s violent and destructive,” Norman MacLeod, president of Gaelic Wolf Consulting in Port Townsend, told ABC News. “But in the middle of all that chaos, this fine, delicate artwork was created.”
Source: http://www.futilitycloset.com/2012/11/16/the-earthquake-rose/