To me, high-tech is always cool. But sometimes low-tech can impress as well. Honda recently used physics, mathematics, and some construction equipment to make a section of highway in California produce classical music.
Just outside of Lancaster, California, the company took the idea of a "rumble strip" and modified it. (A rumble strip is that set of grooves cut into the shoulder of a road that makes a rumbling sound when you drive over them, with the intention of waking drivers who might inadvertently fall asleep at the wheel.) By using calculations to vary the spacing between grooves and including empty space between sections of grooves, the company was able to produce a reasonably-close rendition of "The William Tell Overture" (you know, the theme from "The Lone Ranger" for you older folks) when a car drove over the modified stretch of road. You can see their efforts (and hear the final result) by clicking
here. It's actually pretty amazing.
Is this going to change the world? Nope. Is it going to get people to look at Honda's Web site? Yep. Do I care? Nope. I just like the fact that somebody took an idea, gave it a twist, and made it happen, and this time it didn't require a computer doing a bunch of number-crunching or video-generating to make it happen. No, wait, I take that back. There was indeed a computer involved in all of this--the human brain. That's pretty high-tech after all!
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