This video purports to show an amateur experiment in which someone created a small gravitational field "using a speaker and a generated sound wave." The instructions say that a Bose Companion 2 Series II speaker was used, and a "sine wave at 16 khz" was generated.
Obviously it's fake. Audio speakers will not create a gravity field. But I'm not sure how they created the special effect. (Not that I know much about creating video effects.)
Perhaps they used some kind of fancy editing software. Or perhaps they did it a really low-tech way -- moving the objects one frame at a time to make it appear as if they were sliding towards the speaker. If they did it the latter way, they managed to make the sliding effect look very smooth.
Perhaps it's a viral ad for Bose speakers.
For some reason this video keeps getting removed from Metacafe. Hopefully it'll stay up long enough for you to see it.
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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.
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.
But, no.
Maybe the speaker is an electromagnet.
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.
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?
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.
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.
BUSTED!
monofilament, object placed on monofilament and pulled.
When pulled, same effect.
Notice how glue bottle slides as being put down.
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.
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=94KzmB2bI7s
And that's nowhere near 16khz.
The motion of the objects after hitting the speaker is too smooth. I say incline instead of magnets.
Excuse me, gotta run now...
"Scene" is secured firmly.
Speaker then secured to the "Scene"
"Scene" is tilted ala "Jamiroquai"
Object unsecured slides towards speaker.
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.
this is a excellent web site by the way
The whole "room" (table, wall, camera) is small and on a fixed but tiltable mount. When he's ready for the object to move, he simply lifts the "room" and the object slides down to the speaker, while from the camera's perspective everything stays level. Unfortunately for him, the frame isn't fixed tightly enough to the wall, so it shifts a little each time and blows the secret.
It's a little like that classic Fred Astaire scene where he's dancing on the walls, filmed in a rotating room.
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Absolutely. And the glue seems to slide just a bit when he first puts it down (well before he turns on the speaker).