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Japan's Melody Roads Play Music as You Drive
Krishna Dagli writes "The road works by using grooves, which are cut at very specific intervals in the surface. Just as traveling over small speed bumps or road markings can emit a rumbling tone throughout a vehicle, the melody road uses the spaces between to create different notes."
I have to say that after just getting back from Japan that they do have a certain affection for the whimsy even on large scale publicly funded projects that is just awesome. One of the things I saw was a huge platform with a glass top and water on top that served nothing more than a spaceship like cover for a courtyard down below and an attraction. Pics here .
I would have loved to have traveled on these roads while I was there...
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It's my understanding that the rougher the road surface you drive on, the faster it wears out your tires. Not just a small amount either, I seem to recall reading that it could shorten the life span of your tires by 50%.
I don't know about anyone else, but I think tires are expensive and hate spending money on them. I would not enjoy having them wear out quickly so that I can listen to the same damned song every day on my way to work... The radio already does that for me, and it doesn't ruin my tires.
-hps
Should be an interesting way to gauge your own speed. Besides using an odometer.
That is awesome. I wonder if you could manipulate the harmonic quality of the hum, and take it as far as synthesized speech. "welcome" or "yokoso" as you enter town. That would be jaw-droppingly awesome.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
Saw this on Top Gear (on Discovery Channel) a couple of years back. Not sure if it was Japan, I think it was a European country. I think they used bumps though instead, so that at certain sustained speeds it would play a nice melody but if you went too fast it would sound horrible and scarring.
Chicken fried butter sticks? Do
Years ago the Walt Disney World was looking for additional magical things to add to the roads for their upcoming Millennium Celebration. On a desolate piece of road on property speed warning indicators were tested (the kind you encounter on the side of the road or before a toll road) that played a song. That song was "Zip A Dee Do Dah", and for years it stayed there. There were problems with it. First, was the fact in order for it to work, you would have to be driving a VERY specific speed, not faster, not slower, or it would seem like a random assortment of rumbles. And when someone would go the wrong speed, they'd think there was something wrong (veering of the road, toll soon, etc), and would try to break, get the car back on the road, etc, that it became dangerous. Since it was dangerous, no one would drive the correct speed, and the fact they'd need to tear up the roads just to install it, Disney mothballed the idea.
Forget tire wear. What about the uneven coefficient of friction? That can get you killed. Predictability of your vehicle's reaction in all situations -- especial in emergencies -- is important.
Fight Spammers!
. . . but Achewood predicted this.
In the arc's defense, the robot did dress up his hair like Pete Rose.
Any information may be true or incorrect depending on your perception of said information
Turn it around, and there's virtue in the tune-strips wearing off: sell the rights to lay down an ad jingle to the highest bidder. The life-span of the strips is the cue to put it out for bid again.
This is old hat. I remember when I was a kid and went on road trips, my old man used to joke that it would only be a matter of time before corporations started carving messages into the horizontal grooves on the sides of the road that buzz when you veer out of your lane with messages like, "Wake up with a refreshing Coke!" or "Don't drive without some No-Doz!"
Remember when Great Britain ruled the world? Things change buster and the US will be the Canadians' future Mexico; demograpically as well as metaphorically.
The USA doesn't rule the world. The USA is the market of last resort. As the world economy expands, those forces that presently drain the USA will balance out, improving the overall USA position relative to the rest of the world. Even in these times, USA exports are now at a record high, and the trade gap is actually closing.
Canada isn't going to rule anything. Canadian birth rate dooms the nation. In the end, population wins, and the USA population is growing, and rather dramatically.
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In Montreal a generation of Metro subway cars electric motors were tuned to perfect fifths, coincidentally the first three notes of Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man". The tones were even part of a TV ad campaign when the line was opened.
Technical Explanation PDF (in French.)
However the Montreal Metro offers another treat to the senses: Smell.
The train brakes are two part, electromagnetic over ~10km/h and birch wood injected with peanut oil slower. Thus when a train comes to a hard stop the station smells faintly of burnt popcorn. If you have to smell your public transit this is about as good as it gets!I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I'm afraid this is what happens when there just isn't enough cash to go around. The amount the States get from the Federal taxes in various forms is reduced and so local infrastructure expenditures drop. However, it's not like the Federal government is spending more than it takes in on something that benefits only a select few and has quietly hidden the true costs here and there. There is a war going on; how can we complain about the state of our roads when on the other side of the world there are roads actually getting blown up daily? We have to rebuild those first, along with the electrical distribution, water supplies, schools and hospitals...the list goes on and we haven't even started. Once we have rebuilt Iraq in our image, then and only then can we talk about fixing things here with a clean conscience.
Oh yes? Then I hope you have already sent your regards to your new Chinese and Indian overlords
The hope is that the USA can continue to ramp up its population while sustaining a good rate of growth, such that China and India don't ever really catch up. Check this out.. This is a Census department population forecast for the USA.
Census Population Projections 1998
Notice that it was the high series had the US population at below 300,000,000 in 2006, and we've exceeded that. Thus, assuming the high series continues, the USA population will hit 500+ million by 2050. That's a population doubling time of 75 years. Assuming the same doubling time, we're talking about a billion Americans by 2125...
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+5 interesting
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
Numbers are still growing; but recently--it is impossible to know exactly when--an inflection point seems to have been reached. The rate of population increase began to slow. In more and more countries, women started having fewer children than the number required to keep populations stable. Four out of nine people already live in countries in which the fertility rate has dipped below the replacement rate. Last year the United Nations said it thought the world's average fertility would fall below replacement by 2025. Demographers expect the global population to peak at around 10 billion (it is now 6.5 billion) by mid-century.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9545933
(Anonymous to protect friend's privacy, just in case.)
This is actually old technology. The Swiss, I believe, did it first. It was originally designed to keep people within the speed limit. They found that popular classical tunes "tuned" to play correctly at the speed limit caused speeders to slow down and Sunday drivers to speed up to the proper speed.
Dunno how this got modded to insightful but the idea that there will ever be even 400,000 Americans is ludicrous. The population growth rate of the US is not growing, it is SHRINKING. Same with the rest of the world. The parent seems to be living back in the 70's with his "dire predictions" of overpopulation.
Ah, I merely cited figures by the Census Deparatment, you know, those guys that count people. They have the USA at 1.25 billion people in the year 2100, in their "fast population growth" scenario, which, as I've pointed out, we have already exceeded.
Dude, you aren't factoring in immigrants and their children. The first wave comes in, gets American rich, has a ton of kids.
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