Now That Sounds Bizarre (Archive)

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The Octobass
The octobass is an extremely large bowed string instrument constructed about 1850 in Paris by the French luthier Jean Baptiste Vuillaume (1798-1875). It has three strings and is essentially a larger version of the double bass (the specimen in the collection of the Musée de la Musique in Paris measures 3.48 meters in length, whereas a full size double bass is generally approximately 2 meters in length). Because of the impractically large size of its fingerboard and thickness of its strings, the strings were stopped by the use of an intricate system of hand- and foot-activated levers and pedals. The instrument was, in fact, so large that it took two musicians to play: one to bow and the other to control the "fingering," and was consequently never produced on a large scale or used much by composers (although Hector Berlioz wrote favorably about the instrument and proposed its widespread adoption).

Article

The Worlds Smallest Radio
The worlds tiniest radio is smaller than the diameter of a human hair.The detector which is constructed from a single carbon nanotube and placed between two electrodes can tune into a radio signal and play the audio through a speaker. Unlike how a conventional radio uses an antenna to pick up electromagnetic waves electrically, the nano radio uses one carbon nanotube for all it's functions and picks up signal mechanically through it's natural resonant frequency. To tune into a different radio station researchers change the voltage across the electrodes which in turn changes the resonance frequency and hence the receiving channel. The nano radio has been functional in transmitting music wirelessly from an ipod to a speaker several meters away

The Asphaltophone and Melody Road play music as you drive
In Hokkaido, Wakayama and Gunma Japan you can find roads that play musical compositions as you drive over them. The concept works by using grooves cut at very specific intervals in the road surface.The closer the groves are together the higher the pitch.The idea was initiated by Shizuo Shinoda and the designs were refined by engineers at the institute in Sapporo

The first "singing road" was initially created In Denmark in 1995 by Steen Krarup Jensen and Jakob Freud-Magnus and was called the Asphaltophone.Unlike the Melody Road the Asphaltophone is made from a series of raised pavement markers.

Since the creation of the Aspaltophone and Melody road other musical road projects have been implemented in different parts of the world.

The nano-guitar
In 1997 researchers at the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility created the worlds smallest guitar. The nano guitar which is 10 micrometers long (about the size of a cell) contains six strings, each of which are 100 atoms wide. In 2003 a new nano-guitar was created and Cornell university physicists reported they had used a laser beam to pluck the strings albeit at a frequency of 40 megahertz, which is roughly 17 octaves (or a factor of 130,000) higher than a normal guitar. Their is no practical way to record the sound of the guitar but a reflected laser light could be processed digitally to provide a lower acoustic equivalent which would be audible to human ears.


 * 3.Cornel University News. Nov. 17, 2003

The loudest creature in the sea...is a shrimp?
The Alpheidae also known as the pistol shrimp or pistol crab is a family of caridean snapping shrimp characterized by having asymmetrical claws, the larger of which is typically capable of producing a loud snapping sound used for killing prey and defense purposes.The shrimp snaps a specialized claw shut to create a cavitation bubble that generates acoustic pressures of up to 80 kPa at a distance of 4 cm from the claw. The pressure is strong enough to kill small fish and shatter glass. In addition the snap can also produce sonoluminescence from the collapsing cavitation bubble which momentarily approaches the temperature of the surface of the sun.

References

Space-DRUMS create materials only possible in space
Space-DRUMS (the Dynamically Responding Ultrasonic Matrix System) is a dodecahedron-shaped device that scientists hope to use to manipulate sound waves as a means to create materials only possibly in the conditions of space.According to NASA's website the land mine looking device can completely suspend a baseball-sized solid or liquid sample using a collection of 20 acoustic beam emitters. . The Space-DRUMS project is a collaborative endeavor between Canadian scientist Jacques Guigne and NASA.

References

Acoustic cloak
An invisibility cloak for sound?

Engineers have theoretically designed material that one day could be used to completely deflect sound waves from your house, car or....military submarine.Engineers led by José Sánchez-Dehesa at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, in Spain, have developed a process to direct sound waves around an object so that they re-form on the other side making the object invisible to sonar and insulated from sound. John Pendry of Imperial College London, UK stated that the mathematics behind cloaking have been known for several years, but "what hasn't been available for sound is the sort of materials you need to build a cloak out of."

References

BBC Experts unveil 'cloak of silence'

New Journal of Physics in 2008 Acoustic cloaking in two dimensions: a feasible approach

Paper thin loudspeakers
Supposedly University of Warwick engineers have developed a loudspeaker that is flat, flexible and roughly twice the thickness of a conventional sheet of writing paper (0.25mm thick). The FFL (flat flexible loudspeaker) technology is a a flexible laminate and a culmination of conducting and insulating materials that when excited by an electrical signal vibrates to produce sound.The FFL was developed by Dr Duncan Billson and Professor David Hutchins and now is being presented for commercial use.

References http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090401102239.htm

Worlds First Terahertz-Frequency Sound Laser
Physicists from the UK and Ukrainian have supposedly built the first terahertz-frequency sound laser

"It is a great work," says Chi-Kuang Sun, a laser specialist at the National Taiwan University in Taipei City. "A high-energy coherent phonon source like a saser is the best tool we can have to noninvasively probe the unknown nanoworld."

To fire the device, the upper part of a semiconductor stack, made from thin, alternating layers of gallium arsenide and aluminium arsenide is exposed to an intense light beam which excites electrons in the material releasing sound waves, or phonons.

Previous sasers have been developed albeit the phonons oscillate a billion times per second (gigahertz) as opposed to terahertz.

References: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17310-most-powerful-sound-laser-to-shake-up-acoustics.html

Katzenklavier
A cat piano or Katzenklavier (German) is a musical instrument described by Athanasius Kircher. It consists of a line of cats fixed in place with their tails stretched out underneath a keyboard. Nails would be placed under the keys, causing the cats to cry out in pain when a key was pressed. The cats would be arranged according to the natural tone of their voices.

The instrument was described by German physician Johann Christian Reil (1759-1813) for the purpose of treating patients who had lost the ability to focus their attention. Reil believed that if they were forced to see and listen to this instrument, it would inevitably capture their attention and they would be cured (Richards, 1998).

This week: a brief list of some odd audio inventions and activities of the past.

 * Radio Gets Robot Sound Technician (Feb, 1936)


 * “PEDRO” - The First Machine That Really Talks (Apr, 1939)


 * Doctors Listen to Noises in Patient’s Head (Jan, 1938)


 * Swimming Taught By Telephone (Jun, 1934)


 * Singer Can Hear Voice As Audience Hears It (Feb, 1934)


 * Will Power Operates Gramaphone (Nov, 1932)


 * How To Tap a Phone(Mar, 1957)

The flu test of the future might be at home and powered by....music?
Microfluidics, the precise manipulation of fluids on the sub-millimeter scale is supposedly getting a new mechanism of control:

Music.

Researchers at the University of Michigan have claimed to have found a way to manipulate the motion of tiny droplets of liquid in microelectromechanical (MEMS) devices by using musical tones. By transmitting and combining tones or applying them at appropriate times, they can mix,sort and split liquids at the nano or pico liter level and move them along multiple channels on a glass or plastic micropfluidic chip.According to the researchers thousands of chemical reactions can be performed on the chips simultaneously.The significance of this encompasses applications from the diagnostics of the common flu and other illnesses to the synthesis of medicines.The researchers believe ideally this is a stepping stone towards making microfluidic devices portable. As it stands the devices are bulky and require extensive effort to operate.

References

http://pda.physorg.com/soundwaves-device-system_news167488557.html

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/diagnostics/musicpowered-microfluidics

Sound becomes light?
Supposedly scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have reverse engineered a process that transforms electricity to sound in a manner that converts sound waves to light radiation.

According to their research the scientists sent a sound wave with a frequency of around 100 million times higher than what humans are capable of hearing through a special piezoelectric material, which converted it into electrical signals. The electrical signals gave off radiation (light waves) in the terahertz frequency. According to Evan Reed (one of the researchers) the frequency range where sound and light overlap is extremely narrow ---around 100 GHz to 10 THz--- hence making the findings unique.

References

[http://www.popsci.com/node/33226 Popsci.com - Sound Becomes Light. By Brooke Borel Posted 03.19.2009]

Acoustic refrigeration
What do Ben & Jerry's ice cream,the Office of Naval Research and Penn State all have in common?

In 2001 they all teamed up to develop a refrigerator that uses sound waves to keep food cold.

Steve Garrett one of the members of the Pennsylvania State University's Applied Research Laboratory said: "What began as basic research on the fundamental connections between sound waves and heat transport, funded by the Office of Naval Research," "is getting closer to providing an environmentally benign substitute for traditional engine and refrigeration technology."

The concept called "thermalacoustics" has been around for 20 years but the Penn State team supposedly substantially reduced the size of the cooling apparatus while reaching a temperature of 8 degrees below zero without using hydrofluorocarbons or hydrochlorofluorocarbons; both are chemical compounds used in conventional refrigeration and deemed agents to global warming.

References:

Scientific American, Sound Waves Chill in New Freezer Design By Sarah Graham December 4, 2002

[http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2003/01/57063 Wired magazine, Hear That? The Fridge Is Chilling by Noah Shachtman 01.06.03 ]

Scientists create Acoustic Black Hole
Supposedly physicists in an effort to detect theoretical Hawking radiation (A theoretical type of thermal radiation predicted to be emitted by black holes due to quantum effects) using Bose-Einstein condensates (a "low temperature" and "slowed" quantum state of matter where clumped atoms behave as one) have created an artificial black hole that traps sound instead of light.

"The team cooled 100,000 or so charged rubidium atoms to a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero and trapped them with a magnetic field. Using a laser, the researchers then created a well of electric potential that attracted the atoms and caused them to zip across the well faster than the speed of sound in the material.This setup created a supersonic flow that lasted for some 8 milliseconds, fleetingly forming an acoustic black hole capable of trapping sound. "

References
 * New Scientist  Physicists create 'black hole for sound' 17 June 2009 by Rachel Courtland

I just can't get that singers voice out of my brain
Scientists from Maastricht University have discovered that a persons voice leaves a unique neural "fingerprint" in the mind of the listener. Through neuroimaging researchers were able translate brain activity into specific patterns that determine the identity of a speech sound or a persons voice.In the tests seven people were presented with 3 different speech sounds all of which were spoken by three different people.The brain activity of the subjects was mapped using fMRI accommodated by various data mining techniques.

The conclusions?

The researchers determined that the neural "fingerprint" of a speech sound does not change if spoken by somebody else and that a speaker's voice fingerprint remains the same regardless of what he or she says.

References
 * Neuroimaging Of Brain Shows Who Spoke To A Person And What Was Said. Science Daily (Nov. 10,2008)

Is music in our DNA?
In 1988 Susan Alexander with assistance from biologist Dr. David Deamer measured the vibrational frequencies of the four bases of DNA, adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. Susan Alexander then attempted to convert these vibrational DNA frequencies into audible frequency equivalents.

How did she do it?

DNA has certain resonant frequencies related to the absorption of infrared light. As the light is passed through the sample, it is absorbed at specific frequencies. A device called a spectrophotometer plots the absorption bands as a spectrum.

The spectrum can then be converted to an audible frequency using the equation Frequency (Hz) = velocity (speed of light) x wavenumber

This number - if it were sound - is too high to hear, so she repeatedly cut it in half to get an audible range

She then assigned the frequencies to notes on a MIDI synth (Yamaha DX7). Then, using Editor Librarian and Vision software on a Macintosh computer, the DNA tunings were programmed in as microtonal "scales" for each base:

The result?

(from Susan Alexanders website)
 * "At first hearing of these 60 pitches from infrared spectra was discouraging. The scales and clusters they created sounded so strange and alien that one despairs at first of ever creating a beautiful work of art, or making any coherent 'sense' out of them. An overall description might be "tight relationships... densely packed microtones, with curious leaps."


 * "However, something very interesting began to happen. After weeks and weeks of experimenting with different sound combinations on the synthesizer, a tonal center began to emerge. One pitch seemed to draw other pitches to it...to lend coherency to the mass. This pitch turned out to be a kind of a C#, common to all the bases:
 * Adenine: 545.6 Hz
 * Guanine: 550
 * Average Hz = 544.2
 * Thymine: 543.4
 * Cytosine: 537.8 "

Her conclusions

Are the frequencies in DNA bases harmonically ordered?


 * "They most certainly are. By comparing all 60 pitches one can find all of the precise ratios found in the first 16 harmonics of the overtone series: octaves, P5th, P4ths, Major and minor thirds, Major and minor 2nds and 7ths; even a 'flat' seventh. Mathematically, the odds of this happening at random are almost non-existent."

References:


 * http://www.oursounduniverse.com
 * http://www.oursounduniverse.com/articles/IEEE.html

Can you lend me an ear?
In 1874 Alexander Graham Bell acquired a cadaver with the intent to use one of the ears as a sound transducer. Alexander Bell cut out the ear, softened it's internal tissue with glycerin, attached a hay stalk to one of the small internal bones and attached it to a phonautograph.He then used this device to scratch out a vibrational trace (recording) as the ear received sound.

References
 * Sound Recording.The Life Story of a Technology.Pg 5-6, 2004