Gravity Speakers

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.

Photos

Posted on Wed Oct 24, 2007


Comments

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.
Posted by Brian Utterback  on  Thu Oct 25, 2007  at  12:46 PM
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.
Posted by phlo  on  Thu Oct 25, 2007  at  05:20 PM
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.
Posted by Thomas Sabinowitz  on  Thu Oct 25, 2007  at  09:07 PM
Maybe they tried to do this:
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=94KzmB2bI7s
Posted by ドリーマ  on  Thu Oct 25, 2007  at  09:26 PM
It's a tilt trick. Slick and simple.

And that's nowhere near 16khz.
Posted by Anthony Peluso  on  Fri Oct 26, 2007  at  02:24 AM
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.
Posted by Mozai  on  Fri Oct 26, 2007  at  09:54 AM
Well, I tried to duplicate this experiment and I have to report that I accidentally discovered the "brown note".

Excuse me, gotta run now...
Posted by Blondin  on  Fri Oct 26, 2007  at  01:08 PM
Camera mounted facing "scene".
"Scene" is secured firmly.
Speaker then secured to the "Scene"
"Scene" is tilted ala "Jamiroquai"
Object unsecured slides towards speaker.
Posted by BT  on  Sat Oct 27, 2007  at  05:11 PM
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.
Posted by Daniel Alderman  on  Sun Oct 28, 2007  at  03:32 PM
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.
Posted by smif  on  Wed Oct 31, 2007  at  04:42 AM
this video is obviously a hoax because speakers couldn't do that its obviously someone with a magnet under the tabele, but wait how did the gue move? it couldn't possibly have been that someone put a magnet in the bottom of the glue bottle if you need proof watch the phone you'll see that the little tag is being draged behide so obviosly if the speaker was creating gravity it would be pulling on the tag as well as the phone and with the pen you'll notice that the clip is face down so that proves that the magnetic force is causeing the pen clip to face down

this is a excellent web site by the way
Posted by yall  on  Wed Nov 07, 2007  at  03:46 PM
The big clue is the painting on the wall in the background. See how it gets more and more tilted as the demonstration progresses?

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).
Posted by stopeatingmysesamecake  on  Thu Nov 08, 2007  at  08:58 AM
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