What Goes Up Must … Go Up
An audio “illusion.” The pitch increases, and seems to continue when you replay the clip.
This phenomenon is known as Shepard’s paradox; the ending tones are the same as the beginning ones, so it’s the auditory equivalent of Escher’s “Ascending and Descending” perpetual staircase.
Comments
Comment from swansont
Time: October 8, 2008, 7:12 pm
Awesome! Thanks!
Comment from drew
Time: October 9, 2008, 12:26 am
That’s a really interesting phenomenon. I found the visualization to be less intuitive than it could have been (not to mention it contains several careless errors). Here’s my interpretation:
http://forums.howwhatwhy.com/files/317371-shepard_effect.PNG
Comment from drew
Time: October 9, 2008, 12:28 am
Sorry that last link didn’t work. If you copy/paste the url you can see the image.
global RSS feed.
Comment from Stephanie C.
Time: October 8, 2008, 10:06 am
You can hear the same illusion (with an explanation) here: http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/highest_note/
And a great Java visualization to help you understand the explanation here: http://www.netalive.org/tinkering/shepard-effect/