The Shape You Cannot Hear
Draw a spectrum, then rearrange its phases. The waveform becomes unrecognisable, the sound does not change, and the peak moves by six decibels.
Page 5 of 9
Days 54 to 43
- 54
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A Drum Has No Note
Tap a membrane anywhere and watch which of its modes you reached. Hit the centre and you can only reach three of sixteen.
sound - 52
Where the Beating Stops
Slide one note against another and hunt for the places the wobble disappears. They turn out to be the intervals music already uses.
sound - 51
Where the Fundamental Goes
Drag one number and the note you are listening to disappears while the sound gets louder. Bessel functions say exactly where.
sound - 50
The Collision You Did Not Expect
Fifty days in, the last one is about how soon two things land in the same place. It is much sooner than it feels.
- 49
Up or Down Is Up to You
Two tones half an octave apart. Whether they went up or down is not in the signal, and you will still be sure.
sound - 48
Bulbs Know Fractions
Every bulb on the Mandelbrot set repeats with a period equal to the denominator of where it is attached, and between any two bulbs sits their Farey mediant.
- 47
The Same Colour Twice
Two spectra with nothing in common that are the same colour, until you change the light.
- 46
Two Numbers Make a Vowel
A vowel is two bumps in a spectrum. A voice can only send them at multiples of its own pitch, and a high voice cannot send enough.
sound - 45
The Best of All Triangles
Delaunay maximises the smallest angle in a mesh. I checked it exhaustively, and then noticed the maximum is dreadful.
- 44
Fair to Things You Have Forgotten
Pick six items uniformly from a stream of unknown length while holding only six. The items you threw away had exactly the same chance as the one in your hand.
- 43
Faster Forever
A click track that speeds up without limit, built out of a nine-second loop that repeats exactly.
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