14 ms·
New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie
- philprx 6y agoMy bet: depression rate is going to increase around the bridge where the sound can be heard. I wonder if you can hear it from top of Mount Tamalpais?
- almost_usual 6y agoI was working outside yesterday afternoon and this humming was driving me insane. I thought it was some instrument at a monastery nearby. I can’t believe it’s the bridge.
- tonywastaken 6y agolol you know what sound drives me insane in my part of town? The encampments below my window.
- RC_ITR 6y agoI bet they don’t love the sound of your complaining either. Both human. Both entitled to exist.
- john_moscow 6y agoI bet they aren't exactly happy with their day-to-day either. It's just we are somehow normalizing and glorifying suffering instead of encouraging people to walk an extra mile to get out of it.
- spoopyskelly 6y agoMaybe they should walk an extra mile away from his windows.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- person_of_color 6y ago> I can’t believe it’s the bridge. Spat out my drink at this comment.
- isoskeles 6y agoI’m curious if there can be an impact on the wildlife out here. Animals don’t understand what the noise is, so can it disorient them in some way that could have a harmful effect?
- hedora 6y agoI’m sure the constant noise will negatively impact predators, at the very least.
- klyrs 6y agoWorse mistakes have been made https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940) Pretty sure every bridge engineer knows that one. Amusing that the lesson didn't generalize.
- metalliqaz 6y agoEvery engineer, not just the ones building bridges. I was required to take an Engineering Ethics course that covered Tacoma Narrows as well as other incidents, such as the famous Hyatt Regency walkway.
- systemvoltage 6y agoI second that. As a mechanical engineer, we needed to learn about public works and prior disasters that has happened when there is lack of rigor or otherwise oversight, including Tacoma bridge and Hyatt Regency walkway.
- clairity 6y agoi covered them twice even. once as a mechE undergrad, and again in business school. the former primarily focused on the engineering dynamics and ethics, and the latter primarily on the organizational behavior and decision-making failures.
- hedora 6y agoWe covered software-induced disasters in my CS courses. This isn’t standard, which explains a lot about our profession. My two favorite examples were: The Therac-25 — it’s just frontend GUI code. Why test it? What could go wrong? The Siberian gas pipeline explosion of ‘82 — not technically an accident, but it shows the problem with testing untrustworthy code to correctness. It was also the biggest non-nuclear man-made explosion, at least at the time. The Russians had stolen some pipeline schematics from US companies. The theft was discovered before they stole the control software. Instead of stopping the software from being stolen, US intelligence modified it so an integer would overflow after a year (or two) of operation. The Russian economy would be ruined if the pipeline wasn’t operational in less time than it would take the bug to trigger, so it wouldn’t show up in testing. When it triggered, it slammed a bunch of valves shut, causing multiple parts of the network to explode at the same time. The US military’s seismologists detected it, and thought the Russians had detonated a new type of nuclear weapon. The military was going to escalate until the intelligence service told them they were responsible for the blast. Here’s a decent list of other incidents: https://royal.pingdom.com/10-historical-software-bugs-with-extreme-consequences/ https://royal.pingdom.com/10-historical-software-bugs-with-e...
- legitster 6y agoOops. How did they not notice the noise while installing it?
- metalliqaz 6y agothe people who designed it were probably nowhere near the people who installed it
- BurningFrog 6y agoThey probably did.
- wpietri 6y agoIt depends on wind speed and direction. The wind around the bridge varies a great deal: https://wind.willyweather.com/ca/marin-county/golden-gate-bridge.html https://wind.willyweather.com/ca/marin-county/golden-gate-br...
- razster 6y agoWonder how this will affect housing prices? That is if it's there to stay...
- mistersquid 6y agoThis sounds so beautiful and desolate, reminding me of a combination of the first two tracks from Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol 2, disc 2, in particular "Blue Calx" and "Parallel Stripes" starting from 40 seconds. [0] Thank you for sharing. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXBAU8HsAqk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXBAU8HsAqk
- bitcharmer 6y agoI don't think SF residents are as thrilled. It's overwhelmingly loud.
- sevencolors 6y agoI imagine it’s just going to be ignored. Like the bart “screeching” they never fixed.
- ketzo 6y agoThat was such an insane thing to discover my first time on the BART. I’m sitting there thinking a catastrophic accident is about to occur, but everyone else is just on their phones... oh, that’s just the screech!
- ljm 6y agoFrom a Londoner's perspective, this is giving me tortured flashbacks to travelling on the Jubilee Line. It's physically painful to hear once you start speeding up inside the tunnels.
- jimkleiber 6y agoSounds like the song from Devs.
- dessant 6y agoI'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. We were very lucky to track it down to a badly installed air conditioning vent 200 m away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum
- dustym 6y agoTwo 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 shuttered the project and have started dismantling the turbines. It seems like a total failure: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-green-new-deal-in-profile-11549325968 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-green-new-deal-in-profile-115... 2. I was on a solo canoe trip in a remote part of Maine a couple of weekends ago and I kept hearing the sound of a motor start up and then die down. I heard it multiple times along a 25 or so mile stretch of water with the only other sounds being birds, moose rumbling in the woods, and beavers slapping the water with their tails. I chalked the sound up to some wind turbines I had seen on my drive up there and felt justifiably annoyed at the encroachment of the industrial world into my backwoods trip. I did some research when I got home and it turned out that I was hearing ruffed grouse "drumming" to mark their territory. In retrospect, it's an amazing sound: https://youtu.be/q0obByQW23k?t=21 https://youtu.be/q0obByQW23k?t=21
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoGeez, I'm torn on number one, since obviously locals should be able to live in peace, but the world is in such incredibly dire need of clean energy. Surely this was an issue with these specific turbines, right? Not a problem with all of them?
- jadyoyster 6y agoLisbon also has a bridge that you can hear from miles away: one lane in each direction has a surface made of metal grating which makes a loud hum when cars drive over it. People who live nearby don't notice it (strange looks if you point it out) but I think it's sad that it's impossible to escape the constant noise in certain places.
- ttsda 6y agoAnother relevant bit about Lisbon's 25 de Abril bridge is the common misconception that it was designed by the same company as the golden gate, as it looks similar and also has a red paintjob, when it was in fact the company that designed the Bay Bridge, which is even more similar (except for the colour).
- flak48 6y agoI guess there aren't all that many companies that can build such massive bridges. Now I'm wondering where else I might have seen a bridge made by the same people.
- rconti 6y agoWere just there last fall, and yeah, it's incredibly loud, both going over the bridge, and from the viewpoint, and.. well, pretty much all over I imagine. I will say, I didn't notice it from the city side, though -- perhaps because of the way the city curves away from the bridge, or because you're "underneath" the sound rather than above it.
- gregoriol 6y agoThere is this building that has a similar kind of noise: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetham_Tower,_Manchester https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetham_Tower,_Manchester
- zw123456 6y agoDoes anyone know if they are planning on removing the slats? Maybe if they randomly changed the spacing of the slats if it would alleviate the problem ?
- japhyr 6y agoWhat's resonating? If the slats themselves are resonating, spacing them differently won't help much. Then again, if it is the slats would a horizontal brace running along the middle of the slats dampen or eliminate the resonance? | | | ------------- | | |
- zw123456 6y agoGood point, it could be that they are vibrating like reeds. Bracing could help in that case. or could they attach weights to each one to change the resonant behavior ? It would be interesting to get a high speed video of one to see.
- petee 6y agoDampers are probably only solution that doesn't involve rebuilding it. I haven't seen a great photo, but one of the videos seems to show the rails are square tubing...so could be vortex shedding? Running a brace might not be a bad idea, but i could imagine that it might just double the octave, and make it a bit quieter
- zw123456 6y agoif damping weight work I could see a crowd sourced solution, a lot of people in the area could get some gorilla glue and a bucket of pebble and glue them on the slats.
- petee 6y agoUpdate: Just saw the video from the manufacturer, and it's not tubing like I thought I saw, but just flat stock steel. No wonder they're singing
- 6y ago
- woodrowbarlow 6y agothis is fascinating! i wonder how long it will take them to do something about it? seeing the video, i almost wish they'd keep it, but i don't live nearby, so... i found a couple more video examples of accidental acoustic wind effects in architecture -- but it looks like these aren't as ever-present and loud as the Golden Gate Bridge is right now. Beetham Tower - Manchester, UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8-MrU6lpwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8-MrU6lpwg Freedom Tower - NYC, USA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=25&v=nkjA3BvvOuw https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=25&v=nkjA3BvvOuw in the Beetham Tower case, apparently the architect lives in the tower's penthouse. i bet they're frustrated that none of the fixes have completely remedied the problem. links from: https://gizmodo.com/when-buildings-howl-a-primer-on-architecture-that-whis-1475982071 https://gizmodo.com/when-buildings-howl-a-primer-on-architec...
- noir_lord 6y agoWas in Manchester to see Metallica last year, Beetham Tower is spectacularly ugly in person though I suspect it'll be around long enough it'll become a much loved icon.
- RobPfeifer 6y agoYea, it doesn’t sound musical. Just like construction is happening every time it’s windy
- discobot 6y agoI wonder how this sound together with fog horns. Should be glorious
- hbarka 6y agoReminds me of Google’s old Crittenden Lane buildings. The buildings have exterior metal vertical slats over windows for shade control. They sing when it’s windy.
- jrockway 6y agoI never knew that. I am surprised there wasn't more chatter about how the sound attracted or repelled mountain lions.
- _bxg1 6y agoI honestly think this is awesome and beautiful, though I might feel differently if I lived nearby just because of how relentless it is. I remember years ago I had the idea that if you could design construction equipment to rotate/oscillate/whatever at frequencies that were harmonic with each other, construction noise would become musical, almost like a very loud set of wind chimes.
- pierrec 6y agoThere's a scene like that in the 2003 version of Zatoichi. But it's with manual construction equipment, so the musicality is rhythmic rather than harmonic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk4oGCPGXz4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk4oGCPGXz4
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- RobPfeifer 6y agoYea I do. Our neighborhood on nextdoor is pretty unhappy...
- dvh 6y ago"In the future the most valuable thing will be silence" --Voltaire
- zimpenfish 6y agoPretty much the only good thing about the lockdown was the massive reduction in sound levels in London. Just off Old Kent Road which means traffic noise dropped, plane noise disappeared[1], general hubbub of the feral children vanished, no late night parties at the community centre, etc. It was as close to blissful as I've encountered in London. [1] Normally one every 5-10 minutes from 0500 to 23000 since we're on Heathrow approach and not far off City's path.
- ComputerGuru 6y agoLots of good things about the lockdown from the aspect of peace, quiet, nature, clean air, reduced light pollution, and more. It just comes at a cost that society isn’t willing to bear.
- carapace 6y agohttps://xkcd.com/2305/ https://xkcd.com/2305/
- ComputerGuru 6y agoIt looks like you may have misunderstood what I was saying. The polls pictured that linked to say America is united to defeat coronavirus even at such a high cost. My argument is that this price that nets us these wins of peace, quiet, reduced pollution, etc etc comes at a price that society would not sustain past this crisis.
- carapace 6y agoAh, sorry, I get it now. And I suspect you're right. FWIW, my big hope is that we can reconfigure our economy to work without conflicting with those wins. (The climate is still changing, so we have to reconfigure anyway.)
- digitalsushi 6y agoCheck out The Singing Ringing Tree art exhibit: https://youtu.be/4B0hGyKV9qs?t=12 https://youtu.be/4B0hGyKV9qs?t=12
- dylan604 6y agoWith the clouds in the background in the video and the shape of the installation, my first thought on how to describe it would be a tornado rather than a tree. Maybe growing up in Tornado Alley predispositions me that way. I could see it as some sort of storm warning setup, steampunk style.
- zimpenfish 6y agoWent up there a while back but it seemed to be too windy for it to make any notes. But it is a beautiful sculpture in and of itself anyway.
- pronoiac 6y agoSounds more like a theremin than a kazoo to me. (A kazoo sounds funnier.)
- tempodox 6y agoI wonder whether this could have a destabilizing effect on the construction over time?
- madaxe_again 6y agoYeah, I wondered this, given that you can use tones like this to, say, loosen bolts.
- ireflect 6y agoThis is very similar to an Aeolian Harp, also known as a wind harp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolian_harp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolian_harp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtzSm76ppS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtzSm76ppS4 They are pretty cool art installations. The Golden Gate bridge may now be the largest such installation ever built!
- Balgair 6y agoOk, I'm on board here. This is really cool. Yes, it cannot be a 24/7 thing, the harp/bridge is too loud. Also, putting resonances into a suspension bridge is likely to be unsafe. That said, like the chiming of church bells in a village, it may be used selectively. I can imagine some Burners quickly putting up an adjustable mechanism to have the bridge sing/chime. Something that can point into the wind correctly (to some degree) and then be readjusted to turn off. Possibly to make more than just one note, like a carillon of bells in a bell tower. Maybe at the tops of the hour it can turn on/off, like a church bell, to signal the time. Or on special occasions like New Years Eve, the 4th of July, etc. Or for swearings-in of a mayor's term, etc. Heck, even as a warning system for earthquakes. Having that loud of an instrument, powered by the wind, and then controlled by a few hundred actuators or a bridge-worker/bell-ringer moving steel beams in and out, it's just too good of an idea. If something like that could be made to work, on such an iconic bridge, well, that's a whole new industry. People have done 'love locks' for years now, chiming bridges would be a great idea too.
- wpietri 6y agoYou might also appreciate the Wave Organ: https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/wave-organ https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/wave-organ
- TigeriusKirk 6y agoI joked with a friend today that with San Francisco being San Francisco, someone will have a system for making it play Carol Of The Bells by next week.
- 6y ago
- dmix 6y agoHere’s a BBC doc on the “Bristol hum” https://youtu.be/QpeKot2X_O8 https://youtu.be/QpeKot2X_O8 Makes me almost happy for my hearing loss from attending a Jack White concert in a tiny bar where he maxed out the sound system. Although that’s probably worse off.
- Balgair 6y agoAnother '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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c66w_pPnO-s
- swimfar 6y ago"the Burn" = Burning Man (2011)
- nyanpasu64 6y agoHow do they get audible sounds from strings hundreds of meters long? Massive tensions?
- empthought 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone
- FreeFull 6y agoI think it's because the wave propagation speed through the strings is much faster for compression waves, compared to the standard transverse waves.
- mathgenius 6y agoI wonder what the space is in between the slats, or more precisely, the period. Working out what pitch this is, and a bit of $v=f\lambda$ might tell us which way the wind is blowing.
- rdiddly 6y agoI like how this article and lots of people's tweets mention '2020.' As if 2021 is going to be any better and things won't just remain permanently horrible! Have a nice day!
- mdbauman 6y agoI hope somebody has a chance to make high-quality samples/recordings before it's fixed. I doubt we'll get the chance to hear an instrument like this again, accidental or not.
- lostgame 6y agoCame here to say this. This is actually going to end up in the soundtrack to a horror film.
- jacobmoe 6y agoHope to see some musicians creating harmony with it live too.
- gattilorenz 6y agoIt reminded me of this installation in Croatia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_organ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_organ
- jedberg 6y ago> before it's fixed Given that it was intentional, what makes you think it'll be "fixed"?
- gkoberger 6y agoThe article clarifies that "intentional" really just means "known about beforehand", and I imagine if enough people are annoyed they could "fix" it.
- huangc10 6y agoIt's going to be and should be fixed or at least alleviated. They probably thought there would be some noise but not like this. Some model prediction most likely didn't encompass some environmental element.
- floatingatoll 6y agoThe engineers said it's a known outcome from high winds. It seems they made a conscious choice to decreasing the structural risk of extreme wind hitting the bridge in exchange for increasing the noise it generates
- markvdb 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_organ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_organ
- therockspush 6y agoweird you picked that one, since on that wiki is the link to the wave organ in SF. Its pretty close to the Golden Gate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_Organ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_Organ
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y agoI love it, but I can also understand why it could be unbearable for others.
- dmode 6y agoI have been in the Bay Area for 12 years, but still cannot get over how beautiful the bridge, Crissy field, Presidio, and Marine headland is
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- baby 6y agoDid we just make the golden gate bridge more epic?
- Dahoon 6y agoWhat makes it epic compared to other bridges? Well except being in many films so more people knows about it.
- Gibbon1 6y agoIt's universally considered to be a beautiful bridge. Compare and contrast with the old eastern span of the bay bridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland_Bay_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland_... You have to admit the old eastern span was just ugly.
- ghaff 6y agoIt's both the bridge and the location/environment, e.g. the fog banks.
- baby 6y agothe bay bridge at night is not bad https://www.google.com/search?q=bay+bridge+at+night&sxsrf=ALeKk013OYs8b5aiAAPV3ttm1YSaDmMkCQ:1591480293847&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwihqtOMlu7pAhURsJ4KHSFnCrcQ_AUoAXoECBUQAw&biw=960&bih=697 https://www.google.com/search?q=bay+bridge+at+night&sxsrf=AL...
- Gibbon1 6y agoTalking about the old eastern span, the new span looks a lot nicer. https://seaonc-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2018/05/Old-Eastern-Span.jpg https://seaonc-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2018/05/Old-E...
- the_pwner224 6y agoI also don't understand why the Golden Gate is considered beautiful. I've seen it in person. Paint the old one orange and it'll look the same.
- lukejduncan 6y agoThe Black Lives Matter protest is marching over the bridge today starting at Noon. I'm sure it'll be an eerie experience.
- headmelted 6y agoDRINK FULL AND DESCEND.
- aabajian 6y agoThe expressway I-5 bridge in Seattle is notoriously loud and can be heard for miles around. Interestingly, the sound from the busy topmost lane doesn't seem to make it to the ground. You can verify this during the brief pause when the express lane changes directions. I believe the traffic noise from the express-lane is reflecting off the underside of the upper lane. Seems like a diffusing layer on the underside of the upper lane would reduce the sound getting to the city below.
- nikanj 6y agoAlas, the US seems to care little about the lives of people who live near the expressways.
- tobinfricke 6y agoI tried making a spectrogram: https://twitter.com/nibot/status/1269347206445756416 https://twitter.com/nibot/status/1269347206445756416 I tried using baudline[1] (a 20-year-old program!) but it didn't work out-of-the-box on my current Linux installation. Instead I found something called Sonic Visualizer[2], which, while not real-time, worked out of the box. Using Pulse Audio 'pavucontrol' it was easy to configure Sonic Visualizer to use as its input the 'monitor' channel, i.e. capturing the audio while the video played on Twitter. I'd love to get baudline working again since it's able to run in realtime. It looks like the main tone is at 440 Hz and tones at 400 and 480 Hz come and go. Not sure what to conclude from this. :-) [1]: http://www.baudline.com/ http://www.baudline.com/ [2]: https://www.sonicvisualiser.org/ https://www.sonicvisualiser.org/
- saagarjha 6y agoThat you should take a tuning fork to the bridge and listen for beats?
- johnghanks 6y agok
- pointer_pointer 6y agoplease leave this site
- divbzero 6y ago> the main tone is at 440 Hz The largest tuning fork in the world! [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_(pitch_standard) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_(pitch_standard)
- peterkos 6y agoevery musician ever: A440 PROVEN BY THE BRIDGE
- pmiller2 6y agoA440 is not as universal as you’d think. Tunings as low as A435 and as high as A466 are in use even today. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_(pitch_standard) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_(pitch_standard)
- Animats 6y agoThere 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) and find the target. This needs an app with timing accurate to a millisecond or so. Can you get that from cell phones? The built-in clock synchronization isn't that good. The GPS receiver has more accurate time, but you may not be able to get at that.
- gpm 6y agoSound travels, what, 30 centimeters a ms? Bluetooth/wifi is good for at least a few meters, and should have latency of around a ms. Should be pretty easy to synchronize via that.
- Animats 6y agoYou need to maintain millisecond sync while the devices are widely separated, possibly for hours. Cell phone clocks are not millisecond-accurate over hours. The idea is that a group of people all download the app and walk or drive around the area of interest collecting time-stamped audio and sending it to a server. Amusingly, data collection would be easier with analog technology. Get some VHS walkie-talkies, and, at the base station, feed all the channels into a multitrack tape recorder like musicians use. No sync problems.
- gpm 6y agoFor sounds transmitted through the air, ms precision is really necessary at distances of more than a few meters. Network time should be close enough at 10s or even 100 ms (roughly speaking < 10 meters of error - which is good enough to set up a local monitoring net via wifi with <1ms/<30cm of error). I guess this is complicated by the fact that the speed of sound through the ground is ~6km/s. Rather faster than the speed of sound through the air. Multiplying those errors by 20... but 200 meters of error isn't that bad. A powerful local network with no latency would then be enough to isolate further. Anyways, turns out that you can get gps time on androids, so this should be solvable with much better latency https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7017069/gps-time-in-android https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7017069/gps-time-in-andr...
- jtaft 6y agoAccording to following, engineers knew this sound would happen during high winds from the west. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/06/golden-gate-bridge-san-francisco-sings https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/06/golden-gate-...
- floatingatoll 6y ago> “We knew going into the handrail replacement that the bridge would sing during exceptionally high winds from the west, as we saw yesterday. We are pleased to see the new railing is allowing wind to flow more smoothly across the bridge.”
- asdfadsfgfdda 6y agoHere's a video from the company that built the new handrail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-XCbsyRENI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-XCbsyRENI From your article: "The wind retrofit project is designed to make the Bridge more aerodynamic under high wind conditions and is necessary to ensure the safety and structural integrity of the Bridge for generations to come,” Cosulich-Schwartz said." This statement doesn't agree with the video's rationale for updating the railings. I'm guessing the new suicide net increased the wind loading, so the handrail had to be modified to reduce its wind loading. Without the suicide net project, I doubt the handrails would be changed. But the suicide net project is contentious politically, so they cannot admit this. The new handrail uses long, unsupported plates. The old handrail was far more rigid: https://www.bontena.com/contents/2018/12/Interview-with-Rick-Bulan-Owner-and-Designer-of-Golden-Gate-Furniture-Co-18121102 https://www.bontena.com/contents/2018/12/Interview-with-Rick...
- kenhwang 6y agoI'm kinda curious what the rational of the net is. If you're determined to jump off the bridge, you can jump off the net too.
- FartyMcFarter 6y agoSuicide attempt survivors often say they regret their choice to attempt suicide. Giving them a second chance makes sense in this context.
- narrator 6y agoThe second law of thermodynamics says that the energy of reducing the wind's speed has to go somewhere. It's either going to push the bridge around, make noise by generating vibration, generate electricity as in a wind turbine, or some combination of the three.
- konschubert 6y agoWell, I guess the goal may have been to let the wind pass through.
- enchiridion 6y agoI think this fence was explicitly designed to block wind.
- petee 6y agoThe article says it was to reduce wind resistance. In a separate video, the manufacturer states this was needed to offset for the new suicide net
- gibsonf1 6y agoI rode across the bridge in high winds last week and I thought that the bridge might be failing somehow - the sound was almost unbearable - I thought a serious safety issue was potentially occurring because of a structural frequency effect. I guess the good news is that there is no emergency - bad news is maybe ear plugs on bike rides on windy days.
- pengaru 6y agoMaybe they should find a way to generate electricity from the bridge, it sees plenty of wind practically every single day for the same reason the SF bay is great for sailing. https://patents.google.com/patent/US9444372B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US9444372B2/en https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_Bladeless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_Bladeless
- zamadatix 6y agoThe slats were added to reduce wind resistance. Generating power from wind would greatly increase wind resistance.
- rini17 6y agoIt depends. Doubt that would affect wind resistance if the shape stays the same, only the vibrations would be partially dampened by added piezoelectric generators. Draining some mechanical energy by turning it into heat+electricity might even improve the mechanical properties.
- ilaksh 6y agoIf instead of the slats they installed thousands of tiny vertical axis wind turbines, perhaps much of the energy would be used to turn them rather than vibrate the air. I guess it might also make a noise, but maybe quieter or less grating.
- aritraghosh007 6y agoI'd assume that the engineers would have performed some form of stress tests for these installations that were actually meant to afford wind resistance and that the noise should have been noticed. Does anyone know how these conditions are tested in a simulated large structural engineering lab?
- chiph 6y agoIt sounds like a WW-II air-raid siren. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgaCNEQzL1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgaCNEQzL1Q
- djmips 6y agoSomeone said it's 440Hz and "something I read online" says the UK air raids had a component frequency of 450Hz.
- Falloodude 6y agoHoly moly I can hear this from the Inner Richmond at night, WHILE IN MY BED. I thought my tinnitus was doing something new, but it's the freaking bridge!
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoWe 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?
- tylercubell 6y agoIt's called water hammer. You could try putting in water hammer arrestors.
- walshemj 6y agoWith my Mechanic engineering hat on - this sounds more like water hammer to me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoLmVFAFjn4&vl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoLmVFAFjn4&vl=en
- hedora 6y agoDefinitely water hammer. Find a different plumber. Be sure to review the first one on yelp after the second confirms.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoOnline I see that described as a 'hammering sound'. Not our problem. We have an extended thrumming that lasts for many seconds. And it can be delayed from the event by seconds. Is that definitely the same thing?
- ComputerGuru 6y agoIt doesn’t move that long or much; rather, it oscillates as the water smashes into the valve and bounces back repeatedly.
- nullc 6y agoIf 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.
- jccalhoun 6y agoApparently you can hear it from pretty far away and not just as you go over the bridge: https://twitter.com/Shirin_Jnk/status/1269143410268467200 https://twitter.com/Shirin_Jnk/status/1269143410268467200
- zobzu 6y agoGiven it makes sound, it vibrates at high frequency. I've troubles understanding why a vibrating bridge is "better for structural integrity". I remember some of these in the past which broke Bridge engineer cares to enlighten me/us?
- odysseus 6y agoReminds me of parts of the Half Life soundtrack. Desolate/dystopian.
- refurb 6y agoThere is a wind harp in South San Francisco that drives me nuts. It just sounds like wind passing through power lines, a low hum.
- robomartin 6y agoThey finally found a way to reduce the cost of real estate in SFO! Seriously, you have to wonder how someone can actually think this is OK when it can be heard from far away at all times and people crossing it are reporting it to be unbearably loud. My prediction is this will be added to the long history of engineering disasters. It's OK, this is how we learn. Here's another video I found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa2j9b8486I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa2j9b8486I
- jejones3141 6y agoHas anyone gone out there with a sound level meter? If it's that loud, won't it drown out sirens or car horns??
- ComputerGuru 6y agoSound perception is extremely complex and nuanced. The brain can tune out both specific frequencies and baseline shift while the ears are more sensitive to some frequencies over others. This sound is fairly pure and doesn’t really overlap with other artificially created sounds you’d encounter about the city, but I’m not an expert!
- mrdrqr 6y agoThis sounds exactly like the audio synthesis I did for a recent generative sound app. I didn't know too much so a very high q band pass filter over brown noise did the trick. Do that over several voices (not necessarily harmonic) and you get something similar. Check it out: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/night-shapes/id1490540845 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/night-shapes/id1490540845
- _bxg1 6y ago> UPDATE, 1:30pm: The sound is intentional.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoI should probably know this, but mechanical design packages include thermal modeling and fluid dynamics modeling. How about modeling for resonating in wind?
- whyenot 6y agoApparently they knew about the hum in advance. Under CEQA they should have had to do an Environmental Impact Report and hold public hearings. Someone is bound to sue. UPDATE: The sound is intentional. Or, at least, known about in advance. According to a statement Saturday morning by Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz of the Bridge District, "The Golden Gate Bridge has started to sing. The new musical tones coming from the bridge are a known and inevitable phenomenon that stem from our wind retrofit during very high winds." Cosulich-Schwartz adds: "As part of the design process, the District did extensive studies on the impacts of the project, including wind tunnel testing of a scale model of the Golden Gate Bridge under high winds." Those tests, seen in a video here, showed that the bridge "would begin to hum" when air passed through it more freely.
- djmips 6y ago"musical"
- sharkfinsoupmix 6y agoCool. Btw, check out the wave organ. https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/wave-organ/ https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/wave-organ/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_Organ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_Organ https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wave-organ https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wave-organ
- djabatt 6y agoClear case of no unit testing by the engineering team.
- bagels 6y agoIt's been windy every time I was near the bridge. Is it howling every single day now?
- jkcorrea 6y agoI can't wait for the 99% Invisible episode on this :)
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoThis reminds me... On the off chance someone reads this and happens to have a copy: I once ripped this mix from, I think it was di.fm or soma.fm, called 'Quiet ambient preceding magnetic storm', but the only hdd it was on broke.
- ilaksh 6y agoI wonder if they will now need to install thousands of rubber vibration dampeners wedged between the slats.. like large versions of tennis racket string dampeners.. if that is possible to do without catching too much of the wind trying to pass through. Maybe only on every other slat, or every three slats, could reduce the noise at least somewhat. So then someone would need to custom manufacturer all of those pieces of rubber and then they would all need to be jammed in there. But then the weather would probably degrade then over time. I just wonder how many millions are going to be spent on mitigating this.
- kurosawa 6y agoThis is nice, it adds another dimension to the audio experience of the bridge-bay 'composite-system'
- asawfofor 6y agoI wonder what Mills College’s Center for Contemporary Music (CCM) will make of this.
- carapace 6y agoThere's a marina in the East Bay that has the same effect on some of the railings there. Much quieter though.
- gpvos 6y agoI eagerly await the Tom Scott video.
- mleonhard 6y agoI heard it 2 miles away at the top of the Lyon Street Steps on Sunday afternoon. I hope they change it to reduce the volume.
- garfieldnate 6y agoI'm glad the tones produced are a whole step apart instead of a half step or something smaller. I wonder if they took that into account in the design; it always drives me nuts when two neighboring beeping electric turn-styles beep in just slightly different tones.
- Kaius 6y agoI don't live in SF but have visited a few times. I would be incredibly angry if someone arbitrarily decided to add a whole bunch of noise into my environment for no good reason. However "interesting" the noise may be to some people, having to deal with it in my daily life would be awful! I cannot comprehend how a person or group could be allowed do something like that.