Shepard Tone Illusion .... and more!

Hey, Vsauce. Michael here.

And today I released a brand new Vsauce Leanback. A playlist of educational videos from all over YouTube that I think are cool and I host sort of like a Vsauce TV show. You can start that by clicking the box up in the corner or the link at the top of this video's description.

But before that, I wanna talk about the Shepard tone. It's a sound made out of multiple sine waves that play a trick on us. See, what they do is continuously rise in pitch and then every so often one of them drops down an octave, but our brains don't perceive that because the other two continue rising and cover for it.

The sine waves take turns dropping down an octave, producing a sonic barber pole, a noise that appears to keep rising in pitch forever and ever without ever actually going anywhere. I was reminded of it this week by FallingFalling.com, a creation of Internet artist New Rafael, where the Shepard tone seems to go down and fall forever.

Rafael also made some other cool sites, like OutInTheWind.com. Here, there's nothing except for dismissing wind that slowly erodes your cursor.

Okay, now some of you may already know this, but in America we say "ADIdas," whereas the rest of the world says "adiDAS." And no, it does not stand for "all day I dream about soccer." That's just a backronym, an acronym made up for a word that already exists.

Instead, it's named after a person, which is why people pronounce "adiDAS." It's named after Adi Dassler, a German guy who got in a fight with his brother, so his brother rode off, went across the river and started his own athletic company, known as PUMA. That's right. Adidas and Puma came from the same town, from the same family.

Finally, before the Leanback, I wanna share this USB typewriter with you. It's a really cool device that plugs into your computer and works like a normal keyboard, except at the same time it keeps a hard copy for your records. It even works with an iPad.

Alright, now it's time to watch the Vsauce Leanback. You can click here to start it. I'll meet you over there. And as always, thanks for watching.