Musical Road

When my brother and I went down to Death Valley in late March, at one point he commented it would be fun to have a road engraver- basically a diamond saw that cuts shallow grooves in the pavement to increase tires' ability to grip the road. His idea was that if you cut the grooves with predetermined spacings, you could drive across a section of road at a set speed, and the variations of groove spacings would create different tones. Short spacings would create higher tones, wider spacings would create lower tones. So you could drive a section of freeway for example and listen to the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth: Dah-dah-dah-dahhhh.

Well, as it turns out, this has actually been done on section of road in Japan. I don't recognize the tune; I'm not even sure it's meant to be a "tune." It may just be odd sound effects. But it is an interesting effect. This might be very useful in combatting highway hypnosis. On the other hand, if you had to drive across this everyday on your way to work, it might get pretty old.