Gravity Speakers

And just to nitpick, that wasn't even 16kHz (like the sound of the cathode ray tube of a tv, or some crickets). Most adults can't hear that high, which would defy the purpose of using this sound.
The "Mosquito's buzz" is usually around 17kHz, but can go from 16kHz and up.
(See older post about the Mosquito: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/4160/ )

Update: I put it trough a frequency analyzer and I get a nice line at 400Hz.
16 thousand Hertz? HAH. 😛

I think the entire field of view is tilted after the hand disappears. What you see is part of a static backdrop that is separate from the person....he is standing on solid ground outside of the tilt-able setup. The surface of the table must be fairly smooth and slick for easy movement.

In the word(s) of Principal Skinner, magnets!

I am fairly sure it is a tilted set, as many have described above. It is possible that it is set at an angle so slight that inirtia holds the objects in place (he places them very carefully) until some vibration (the speaker) is added. Since the piece is obviously edited, it would not be hard to try several times on each item until the best effect is achieved, such as "catching" the glue bottle. No magnet required.

the speaker isn't plugged into anything. you can see that in the last bunch of frames.

Hey, did anybody notice the speaker isn't plugged in to anythign?

On the pull away shot, pause it and you can see the other orange dongle of the cord on the floor.

Much less a power cable for the speaker, usually the one with the volume knob has the power cord... Don't know about this particular model though.

Picture for the lazy:

Heh, John beat me to the punch while I was uploading the picture 😛

Definitely some moving of the set going on. Park your cursor on the bottom right corner of the picture on the wall when the video starts, and then watch it shift. It reveals some hard-to-spot cuts as well.

Another interesting detail: Note what looks like a curtain screen set up to the right on the pullaway shot. Maybe to provide control over the light so no telltale shadows appear? Just an initial thought, but seems like a lot of trouble to go to unless there is trickery going on.

Enjoyable riddle here, though!

certainly a magnet, the glue bottle is the giveaway , with the small jump that it makes when he sets it down.

Well, I took a look at the owners manual pdf, and yes, the power cable does connect with the speaker that has the volume/phones jack.



Funnily enough, the manual doesn't mention telepathy or anything else out of the ordinary.

Here's a clue for you -look at the shadows around the picture frame and chair during the experiment and during the reveal pull back. They are at a steeper angle during the experiment suggesting the objects are propped at an angle relative to the (fixed)TILTED TABLE and camera. (also during the experiment the picture is held firm against the wall (at varying angles...) after it pulls away as if hung naturally from a hook.) Objects are held in place by a magnet held by the guys wife under the table. She releases the magnet and the objects slide down. The objects accelerate smoothly -so it has to be a force i.e. gravity. The lanyard on the phone is lighter so the friction of the table keeps it in place despite the tilt. Put a coffee table book at a 15-20 degree tilt and slide stuff down it -looks the same.

Does anyone know what the background music is?

magnet magic

Looks like stop motion to me.

Ever consider this is TRUE gravity and the entire stage is being rotated while it pauses to allow the operator to place the object down when the entire table and camerage and stage are horizontal.

They did movie tricks this way in roaring 20's.

I think this effect could be obtained with a slightly tilted table, and a speaker set to play a tone that matches the natural resonant frequency of the tabletop.

Objects sitting on the table would be held in place by friction (and not slide) until the speaker is turned on at a frequency that causes the entire tabletop to vibrate. Once the vibration was established, the items on the table would tend to 'walk' down the slope.

The speaker itself could be kept stationary if it had rubber (shock absorbent) feet, which many of them do.

The objects would appear to move smooothly because they would be making tiny 'steps' at the same frequency as the vibration in the surface of the table.

In other words, what 'Harry' said.

hahahahaha, very poorly done, watch the stapler
do the magnetic jump when he places it down and before he turns on the sound!

Another interesting thing to note is that if there was some force attracting objects towards the speaker, wouldn't it have some impact on his hand when he turns the speaker on and off?
Just the first thing that jumped to mind. Kind of like putting your into the blender to turn it off...

Note that when the cell phone is being pulled by the "gravity," the nylon lanyard doesn't move at the same speed as the phone - it gets dragged alongside. If the phone was being pulled by "gravity," the lanyard would move along at the same speed.

i'm a recording technology major at the university of memphis (with very little time right now) but my first thought was that 16khz is the resonant frequency of the table which would cause for some serious vibrations visible or not that could very easily move objects across a slightly slanted smooth surface. just my two cents. peace.

Both the magnet/tilting sound like plausible explanations. I don't really have an opinion on how it was done.


However, it looks awefully like a viral to me. It begins with a nice shot of the brand name before the video. There is a nicely set camera angle with a shot of the hand turning on the camera before each test. It is decently lit (for a "home video"). Then, right before the end, we see an intertitle slide reminding us of the Speakers. Finally, we get an unnecessary pullback shot, enough to reaffirm it was a "home video" to the viewer. Especially in a video otherwise so well edited, it seems completely out of place.

Viral videos seem to often try to remind us that they are home videos in an attempt to make them seem legitimate. It seems to be the general concensus that this has at least some video tricks employed. It seems like a lot to go through for such little return. I mean, what other motive would someone have for making a fake video about their speakers.

I'm certainly not ruling out that it is real (in the sense that it was one unaffiliated person that made the video). However, it seems to contain a lot of the classic elements of a viral.

wow thats awesome! i have to buy some bose speakers....

Alex, speakers do generate a gravity field, any object with mass does. However, the mass of the speaker is so slight compared to anything else that it is swamped by the Earth's gravity field. But this trick seems done by magnets, or tilting or some compination of the two. And maybe the frequency of the sine wave is the resonent frequency of the table, which would help by vibrating the table, but I doubt it. The resonent frequency is determined by size primarily and I think the table is so large that the resonent frequency would be sub-sonic or deep into the bass frequencies. Just an idea.

That's idiotic. The camera is attached to the table. The table is tilted so that the left side is higher. The chair and wall picture in the bankground are tilted too. The objects have enough frictional force to stay still until the speaker cases the tabletop to vibrate, and then the objects fall downwards to the right. Look how the cable on the back of the speaker is hanging.

I vote for the tilting room effect.
Not only did I notice that the picture on the all kept moving from shot to shot, but it seemed weirdly placed - too low to be realistic, yet low enough to be in the shot to give realism to the background.
I think a magnet would make the objects jump or jerk before being moved.

If the speaker had actually been plugged into something, then I would have said that the table was tilted at a slight incline, say <10 degrees. When the speaker gets turned up it would cause things on the table to bounce very slightly, and "jitter" down the table.

But, no.

There's some kind of tilting going on; the back wall and the table are not attached to each other! The picture's frame tilts in an arc between takes, with the center of rotation just to the right of the top corner of the chair. If you place a ruler along the bottom edge of the picture frame, you can mark where the extended lines from the different frame angles intersect (I used post-it notes so as not to mark up my monitor). That would be your center of rotation.

I doubt it's a tilting table, unless all the lighting in the room is also tilting with the table.

Maybe the speaker is an electromagnet.

My guess, the table is slightly tilted such that the friction between the objects and the surface (just) keeps them in place. the vibrations of the speaker perturb it just enough that the object begins to slide, once it is sliding it just keeps going. The fact that the objects seem to accelerate as they slide hints that a slope it involved.

Not only does the table change angle relative to the picture frame between cuts, but the cable coming off the back of the speaker changes angle relative to the speaker.

Vincent is right.

Let the movie load, and then scrub through fast from beginning to end. The picture on the wall behind is getting rotated round a little more each time.

Therefore, I think the whole room is a set (including fake floor), the camera and probably lights are also attached, and everything tilts, so that the items just slide downhill towards the speaker. They are always placed very carefully so that they will slide in a line and "land" on the front of the speaker. If they'd been to the side just a little, they would have fallen past the speaker, and the game would be up.

My thought is that the speaker is working, and that the tone (clearly not 16K, though 16K is in the normal hearing range, albeit at the top) is vibrating the table via resonance of either the tone or one of its harmonics.

If you've ever seen the footage of the Tacoma-Narrows bridge heaving back and forth before crashing to the water below, then you know how powerful resonance can be. The bridge collapse was caused by the wind vibrating the bridge causing it to oscillate at one of it's natural frequencies.

As noted by FrostBird, I get a frequency of a G above middle C on a piano keyboard, right at 400hz.

If the table was leaning even a little, it would vibrate itself downward.

There is no magic, and no voodoo. And certainly has nothing to do with magnets. Sorry, but Elmer's is just not magnetic. I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't even slightly diamagnetic (and you would need extrodinary magnets to physically test this).

For the claim that no other speaker would do this, it could be something as simple as rubber feet on the bottom of the other speakers damping the vibrations. How many speakers did he test?

I think it's magic.

I think that movement is too smooth and too closely matches the acceleration of something sliding down a slope for this to be magnets.

One important note is that there is a cut immediately before the pull-away! This means that the whole setup might have been made in a smaller tiltable model, and then the pieces moved into a room to 'prove as genuine'.

Plus, as others have mentioned, the speaker is clearly not plugged in, so it's faking even at the basic level.

Definitely a tilted table thing. The things about to slide are put down carefully, because they're held there with a magnet. When the speaker is "turned on" the magnet underneath is pulled off (or switched off) so that the item can slide down the table.

Biggest giveaway for me - the cut from the end of the last experiment. You see the slide, then a title card, and then a pullaway - not in one shot. And if you look carefully at the picture at the end of the last experiment and the beginning of the pullaway, you can see that it suddenly gains a shadow - because it's not stuck firm to the wall any more.

At 102 seconds, take a look at the speaker wire end on the floor. It's not even plugged into anything.

BUSTED!

Okay,

monofilament, object placed on monofilament and pulled.

When pulled, same effect.

Notice how glue bottle slides as being put down.

A magnet under the table, dragged along and pulling the object.

Look at the left edge of the table during the pull back. Suddenly there is an electric socket there that wasn't there during all of the slides.

My money's on a tilting room with either some nice speaker or magnet holding the stuff before it begins to slide down embedded in the bottom left part of the table. Indicies for this theory are the picture, the wall wart appearing at the end of the vid and the other changes between *everything* and the pullback shot.
In conclusion: FUCK YOU BOSE. Fuck you for sending me annoying ads, fuck you for trying to go the "viral" way.

Nathaniel: Move your hand up and down. Does it get attracted towards the centre of whatever object's gravity you're experiencing (usually the earth)? Does this stop you from moving it up smoothly? (Answers: Yes, No, it woudln't give away the fakeness of the video)

Adam Stanhope: The weight (in this case a force towards the speaker) is a function of an object's mass (a few grams for the lanyard, tens for the phone) and the gravity it experiences. It's also being held back by friction (once again: mass (this time pointing down) and friction coefficient). On a very smooth table like this, the phone might very probably move faster than the lanyard if the speaker actually had some gravity.

Mickey: The tone's not 16 kHz. Not by far.

My vote is for some sort of reverse filming of someone sliding it backwards with fishing line and him picking it up. it just works, because it would give a good reason why the speakers aren't plugged in and the way the items react to the sound is sporadic.

Maybe they tried to do this:
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=94KzmB2bI7s

It's a tilt trick. Slick and simple.

And that's nowhere near 16khz.

If it was a true "gravity wave", then the strap on the cel phone would be attracted with the rest of the celphone, instead of dragging behind.

The motion of the objects after hitting the speaker is too smooth. I say incline instead of magnets.

Well, I tried to duplicate this experiment and I have to report that I accidentally discovered the "brown note".

Excuse me, gotta run now...

Camera mounted facing "scene".
"Scene" is secured firmly.
Speaker then secured to the "Scene"
"Scene" is tilted ala "Jamiroquai"
Object unsecured slides towards speaker.

The table is being tilted. There is no magnet. If you take the slider, after the film has been loaded, and move it back and forth from start to end, you will see the picture in the background change locations repeatedly. Why would someone continually move a picture?
I was pretty sure of this, and then the camera moved out to show the table. This proved it too me. He felt he needed to prove that he wasn't doing it the way he was doing it. He did nothing to disprove other ways that it could have been done. To the person who said that the items would fall off the table...if they did, the director would simply not have included that iteration of that particular object...he would have shot another until it was right.
I'm certain that this was how it was done.

My guess is that the table is tilted, just slightly. When the speaker is turned on, it causes the table to resonate and the objects get the little bit of movement needed to overcome the friction. If you look carefully, when he places the glue on the table, it moves just slightly when he lets it go.