Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie

kqed.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 344 posts

Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie

#261

Post by rconti »

ljm wrote: post #43
ketzo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was such an insane thing to discover my first time on the BART. I’m sitting there thinking a catastrophic accident is about to occur, but everyone else is just on their phones... oh, that’s just the screech!

From a Londoner's perspective, this is giving me tortured flashbacks to travelling on the Jubilee Line. It's physically painful to hear once you start speeding up inside the tunnels.

With the Paris Metro using rubber tires on being super quiet, every time I use another subway, it blows my mind that these awful noises are tolerated.

Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie

#262

Post by floatingatoll »

mdbauman wrote: post #82

I hope somebody has a chance to make high-quality samples/recordings before it's fixed. I doubt we'll get the chance to hear an instrument like this again, accidental or not.

The engineers said it's a known outcome from high winds. It seems they made a conscious choice to decreasing the structural risk of extreme wind hitting the bridge in exchange for increasing the noise it generates

Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie

#263

Post by TrackerFF »

dessant wrote: post #14

I'm just glad they identified the source of the hum, many people are impacted for years by unexplainable sounds, and it is maddening. It took me and my neighbours a month to find the source of a hum that was resonating with our windows. It was torture, with midnight walks and lurking around potential sources, mapping nearby industrial sites, and questioning our sanity, while our windows were vibrating without a stop.…

For a good year I used to here this high-pitched whine when visiting my grandparents. I could hear it throughout the house, and though it was either a faulty vent, or seagull chicks on the roof. It was not constant, and rather intermittent.

I checked everything, but nothing. Asked my grandparents about it, but they couldn't hear any noises. Finally I got a friend over, and he could hear it clear as day.

One day I noticed my grandmothers hearing aids lying in a casing, and it turns out those were the source of noise. She'd forget to take out the batteries, and they would create a negative feedback-loop that came and went.

Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie

#264

Post by whyenot »

Apparently they knew about the hum in advance. Under CEQA they should have had to do an Environmental Impact Report and hold public hearings. Someone is bound to sue.

UPDATE: The sound is intentional. Or, at least, known about in advance.

According to a statement Saturday morning by Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz of the Bridge District, "The Golden Gate Bridge has started to sing. The new musical tones coming from the bridge are a known and inevitable phenomenon that stem from our wind retrofit during very high winds." Cosulich-Schwartz adds: "As part of the design process, the District did extensive studies on the impacts of the project, including wind tunnel testing of a scale model of the Golden Gate Bridge under high winds." Those tests, seen in a video here, showed that the bridge "would begin to hum" when air passed through it more freely.

Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie

#265

Post by shitloadofbooks »

TrackerFF wrote: post #263
dessant wrote: post #14

I'm just glad they identified the source of the hum, many people are impacted for years by unexplainable sounds, and it is maddening. It took me and my neighbours a month to find the source of a hum that was resonating with our windows. It was torture, with midnight walks and lurking around potential sources, mapping nearby industrial sites, and questioning our sanity, while our windows were vibrating without a stop.…

For a good year I used to here this high-pitched whine when visiting my grandparents. I could hear it throughout the house, and though it was either a faulty vent, or seagull chicks on the roof. It was not constant, and rather intermittent. I checked everything, but nothing. Asked my grandparents about it, but they couldn't hear any noises. Finally I got a friend over, and he could hear it clear as day. One day I not…

High pitch noises are the first to degrade with age. Even >25 years old you typically start to lose certain pitches.

It's why kids could hear the whine of CRTs and their parents were completely oblivious, etc.

Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie

#266

Post by exabrial »

dustym wrote: post #24
dessant wrote: post #14

I'm just glad they identified the source of the hum, many people are impacted for years by unexplainable sounds, and it is maddening. It took me and my neighbours a month to find the source of a hum that was resonating with our windows. It was torture, with midnight walks and lurking around potential sources, mapping nearby industrial sites, and questioning our sanity, while our windows were vibrating without a stop.…

Two unrelated anecdotes: 1. A few years ago I spent some time in Falmouth, MA and there was an ongoing battle over newly installed wind turbines. The humming sound was getting to people, including to the point where they were getting headaches. Some people heard it and others didn't. The locals were going to war with the initiative. This article reminded me of that and I checked in on the ordeal. Looks like they shut…

Reminds me of the first time I heard a moose as a kid. Something from just out of this world.

Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie

#267

Post by Balgair »

Animats wrote: post #144

There should be an app for this. To get direction and location, you need acoustic samples from multiple widely-spaced locations, all synchronized. Human ears are not wide enough apart to directionalize low frequencies, but with a baseline of tens or hundreds of meters from separate cell phones, it's not hard. Run a correlator, line up the samples, compute the hyperbolas of constant time offset, (like GPS and LORAN) a…

Nit: Human sound localization is 'good' from about 200Hz to about 1600Hz. Other posters have the sound at ~440Hz, so humans should be able to localize the sound fairly well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization

Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie

#268

Post by zamadatix »

pengaru wrote: post #180

Maybe they should find a way to generate electricity from the bridge, it sees plenty of wind practically every single day for the same reason the SF bay is great for sailing. https://patents.google.com/patent/US9444372B2/en https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_Bladeless

The slats were added to reduce wind resistance. Generating power from wind would greatly increase wind resistance.

Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie

#269

Post by derivagral »

anonu wrote: post #256
1propionyl wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In truth, the real reason for the disparity in perception is... supernatural in origin. You see... it's the Curse of Chappaquidick. The sound isn't just the breeze passing through turbines. It's the wailing of the immortal soul of Mary Jo Kopechne, her soul mercifully freed from the watery depths but bound to the wind. Her soul, unable to find rest so long as the negligent and wealthy haunt her resting place, now ete…

One of the stranger things I've read on HN.

If someone's grown up in the (eastern part?) of the state, the not-very-veiled subtext is quite entertaining with the typical HN cynical bit flipped on.

Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie

#270

Post by djmips »

whyenot wrote: post #264

Apparently they knew about the hum in advance. Under CEQA they should have had to do an Environmental Impact Report and hold public hearings. Someone is bound to sue. UPDATE: The sound is intentional. Or, at least, known about in advance. According to a statement Saturday morning by Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz of the Bridge District, "The Golden Gate Bridge has started to sing. The new musical tones coming from the bridg…

"musical"
Post reply on HN