Cool. Btw, check out the wave organ.
https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/wave-organ/
New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie
271–280 of 344 posts
Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie
#272I'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.…
I was going insane at my old house because of 'the hum'. It started when I installed double pane windows. I think they dropped the ambient noise to the point where the hum was obvious. Any idea what you'd use to track down very low frequency noise sources(i.e. 15-60Hz)? I don't think a lot of sensors do well in that range.
I got an infrasound microphone but all it did was demonstrate that the hum I can (barely) hear (and that my partner cannot hear) is real... and that indeed it doesn't go away when I cut power to everything within 500ft of my home (which I believed from my own observation, but wasn't completely sure of).
Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie
#273It sounds like a WW-II air-raid siren. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgaCNEQzL1Q
Someone said it's 440Hz and "something I read online" says the UK air raids had a component frequency of 450Hz.
Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie
#274I'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…
Speaking of #2, awhile back I was wondering what noises emus make and it turns out to be something I wouldn't have ever expected any animal to make: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOLF7JhW2Iw
Kinda soothing, really. Just soft, deep thumps.
Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie
#275Clear case of no unit testing by the engineering team.
Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie
#276We just live with a very loud sound at our house. Run water for any reason. When you stop, some 0-15 seconds later an enormous sound reverberates thru the house. Plumber says its 'water pipes growing or shrinking, rubbing against the straps'. But it goes on for 10-30 seconds. No water pipe in the world moves that long/that much?
If its water hammer (as it sounds like it is)-- it can fatigue joints and valves and cause leaks over time. Water hammer can be fixed by putting hammer arresters at the right locations.
Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie
#277Another 'cool' mega-instrument is the Earth Harp. Instead of transverse waves (plucking) the strings, you use compression waves (pushing) in the strings to make the vibrations. Due to some physics here, you then need a very large resonator to hear the sounds. Essentially the Earth itself. Here's a good video from the Burn at an Earth Harp performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c66w_pPnO-s
How do they get audible sounds from strings hundreds of meters long? Massive tensions?
I think it's because the wave propagation speed through the strings is much faster for compression waves, compared to the standard transverse waves.
Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie
#278It's been windy every time I was near the bridge. Is it howling every single day now?
Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I agree. This is very weird but also a very subtle and good comment.
Re: New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie
#280There 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
In this case, I think they're mostly referring to "The Hum"[0] that others have been talking about, since the article is about the source of this noise. When it's lower frequency and not this easy to locate, it would be great if there were some other way to go about it.