The World’s Quietest Room
Scientists at Minneapolis’ Orfield Labs created their own soundless room, an anechoic chamber. Their studies have found that when putting subjects within the chamber, they begin to hallucinate within 30 minutes.
With an average quiet room having a sound level of 30 decibels, the anechoic chamber’s sound level is -9 decibels. The ceiling, floor, and walls of the chamber absorb sound rather than have it bounce off as normal objects do. The chamber is so quiet that the subjects can even hear their own organs functioning.
Although extremely interesting, the experience is rather unpleasant. Not one subject has spent more than 45 minutes in the chamber alone. Leaving a person to only their thoughts, the chamber could drive them insane.
(via onefortheangels)
Piano notes made visible for the first time
Music is beautiful isn’t it? The team at CymaScope visualized the dynamic sounds of the piano’s first strike and the eventual plateau and decay phase of different notes. You can listen to the sounds here and watch as the geometric shapes come to life.
Here is a list of the geometric glyphs for each note
Cymascope - Sound Made Visible
Even cooler than running Aphex Twin through a spectrogram.
How the Duck Hunt Gun Worked
This settles a mystery that has plagued my now semi-grown-up brain for decades, even more than the memory of that hound’s taunting laughter.
If you’re like me, and you played a lot of Duck Hunt growing up, you never quite figured out how the dang gun worked. I mean, I assumed it was shooting something at the screen, like maybe a beam of infrared, and the Nintendo console would somehow triangulate where I was shooting from, and somehow calculate how big my TV was, decipher some x,y coordinates from that and then determine if I had actually hit the duck.
Of course, none of that takes into account that it still registered the kills when I was
cheatingexperimenting by putting the gun right on the screen and pulling the trigger wildly. Well, thanks to the folks at Mental Floss, I know the truth.The gun didn’t shoot anything.
It was a receiver! Check it out:
When you point at a duck and pull the trigger, the computer in the NES blacks out the screen and the Zapper diode begins reception. Then, the computer flashes a solid white block around the targets you’re supposed to be shooting at. The photodiode in the Zapper detects the change in light intensity and tells the computer that it’s pointed at a lit target block — in others words, you should get a point because you hit a target. In the event of multiple targets, a white block is drawn around each potential target one at a time. The diode’s reception of light combined with the sequence of the drawing of the targets lets the computer know that you hit a target and which one it was. Of course, when you’re playing the game, you don’t notice the blackout and the targets flashing because it all happens in a fraction of a second.
My sleep tonight will be that much sounder, now that this has been settled. Now if we could just explain that Power Glove …
Paul Shawcross, chief of the Office of Management and Budget’s Science and Space Branch, responding to a petition encouraging the United States to build a Death Star.
Another reason listed for opposing the Death Star construction?
“Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?”
This White House is the best White House.
(via squashed)
(via jtotheizzoe)
God is real.
And he hated us — Excerpted from “The Pilgrimage”, by Cyrene Valantion
Arctic Monkeys
Remember when these words were the cutting edge of music?
Well it’s ever so funny,
Cause I don’t think you’re special, I don’t think you’re cool
You’re just probably alright,
But under these lights you look beautiful.
And I’m struggling, I can’t see through your fake tan
Yeah and you know it for a fact, that everybody’s eating out of your hands
Well what do you know? oh, you know nothing
But I’d still take you home,
Yeah, I’d still take you home.
So what do you know? you don’t know nothing.
Well fancy seeing you in here, you’re all tarted up and you don’t look the same.
Well I haven’t seen you since last year,
And suprisingly you have forgotten my name, but you know it
And you knew it all along
You say you have forgotten,
But you’re fibbing, go and tell me I’m wrong.
Well what do you know? oh, you know nothing,
But I’d still take you home,
Yeah, iId still take you home.
So, what do you know? you don’t know nothing, no.
Yeah, so what do you know? well you don’t know nothing, no!
Yeah, but I’d still take you home,
And yeah, I’d still take you home.
I said, what do you know? you don’t know nothing.
I fancy you with a passion, you’re a topshop princess, a rockstar too.
You’re a fad, you’re a fashion
And I’m having a job trying to talk to you,
But it’s alright, yeah I put it on one side
And you know that everybody’s looking, you’ve got control of everyone’s eyes.
Including mine.
How can you tell when you are in a room, restroom, motel etc. with a mirror or a 2-way glass?
Here’s how: I thought it was quite interesting! And I know in about 30 seconds you’re going to do what I did and find the nearest mirror.
Do you know how to determine if a mirror is 2-way or not? A policewoman who travels all over the US and gives seminars and techniques for businesswomen passed this on….
When we visit toilets, bathrooms, hotel rooms, changing rooms, etc., how many of you know for sure that the seemingly ordinary mirror hanging on the wall is a real mirror, or actually a 2-way mirror (i.e., they can see you, but you can’t see them)? There have been many cases of people installing 2-way mirrors in female changing rooms . It is very difficult to positively identify the surface by looking at it.
So, how do we determine with any amount of certainty what type of mirror we are looking at?
TWO WAY GLASS IMAGE MIRROR IMAGE
Just conduct this simple test: Place the tip of your fingernail against the reflective surface and if there is a GAP between your fingernail and the image of the nail, then it is GENUINE mirror. However, if your fingernail DIRECTLY TOUCHES the image of your nail, then BEWARE! IT IS A 2-WAY MIRROR!
“No Space, Leave the Place” So remember, every time you see a mirror, do the “fingernail test.” It doesn’t cost you anything.
REMEMBER. No Space, Leave the Place:
Ladies: Share this with your girlfriends, sisters, daughters, etc.
Men: Share this with your wives, daughters, daughters-in-law, mothers, girlfriends and/or friends.Worth reblogging again.
(via onefortheangels)
Narwhals, finally explained.
Narwhal tusks are the result of some fascinatingly odd evolutionary anatomical migration. The “tusk” is actually not a tusk at all, but actually a single canine tooth that made its way to the forehead of an otherwise completely toothless whale. Males can have two tooth-tusks on rare occasions, while females usually have no tusks (but sometimes grow a small one).
These tusks can be up to 10 feet long, and their use, if there is any, is unknown. They are hollow, spiral, and are perhaps to only straight tusks in the animal world. One of the most fascinating parts of narwhal tusk evolution is that they always end up on the left side of the forehead. Somehow this gene can sense when it is on the left side of the body and be activated only there.
Check out Why Evolution is True to read more about the amazingly odd forehead-tooth of Monodon monoceros, the “one tusk, one tooth” whale.
(image via Ed Yong on Twitter)
The rotifer that absorbs the abilities of anything it touches!
The sea snail with flesh made of metal!
The shape-shifting octopus!
The radiation-eating fungus!
Check out the biological explanations of these real-life superheroes at Southern Fried Science.
Suits
I’ve been watching suits for the past few hours. It’s not even about suits, it’s about fucking lawyers!
