
New slats make the Golden Gate Bridge sound like a David Lynch movie - jcarpio
https://www.kqed.org/arts/13881451/the-golden-gate-bridge-sounds-like-a-david-lynch-movie-now
======
dessant
I'm just glad they identified the source of the hum, many people are impacted
for years by unexplainable sounds, and it is maddening.

It took me and my neighbours a month to find the source of a hum that was
resonating with our windows. It was torture, with midnight walks and lurking
around potential sources, mapping nearby industrial sites, and questioning our
sanity, while our windows were vibrating without a stop. We were very lucky to
track it down to a badly installed air conditioning vent 200 m away.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum)

~~~
dustym
Two unrelated anecdotes:

1\. A few years ago I spent some time in Falmouth, MA and there was an ongoing
battle over newly installed wind turbines. The humming sound was getting to
people, including to the point where they were getting headaches. Some people
heard it and others didn't. The locals were going to war with the initiative.
This article reminded me of that and I checked in on the ordeal. Looks like
they shuttered the project and have started dismantling the turbines. It seems
like a total failure: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-green-new-deal-in-
profile-115...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-green-new-deal-in-
profile-11549325968)

2\. I was on a solo canoe trip in a remote part of Maine a couple of weekends
ago and I kept hearing the sound of a motor start up and then die down. I
heard it multiple times along a 25 or so mile stretch of water with the only
other sounds being birds, moose rumbling in the woods, and beavers slapping
the water with their tails. I chalked the sound up to some wind turbines I had
seen on my drive up there and felt justifiably annoyed at the encroachment of
the industrial world into my backwoods trip. I did some research when I got
home and it turned out that I was hearing ruffed grouse "drumming" to mark
their territory. In retrospect, it's an amazing sound:
[https://youtu.be/q0obByQW23k?t=21](https://youtu.be/q0obByQW23k?t=21)

~~~
rasz
1 Modern CFD techniques enable almost silent blades. If a $10 computer fan can
have special dimples/channels why cant wind turbines

[https://www.quietpc.com/nf-a12x25-5v](https://www.quietpc.com/nf-a12x25-5v)

[https://cougargaming.com/us/products/cooling/cfd_red_led_fan...](https://cougargaming.com/us/products/cooling/cfd_red_led_fan/)

[https://aerocool.io/us/product/silent-master-
blue-20cm/](https://aerocool.io/us/product/silent-master-blue-20cm/)

~~~
close04
Well... size matters. The tip of a wind turbine blade moves _much_ faster
(~25m/s, up to 80m/s in the biggest ones) than the tip of a silent computer
fan (~5-6m/s, up to ~10m/s in the faster ones). You can make the blades more
silent but there's a limit to what you can do when your blades move that fast
and are up to 75m long. And any solution that reduces efficiency is probably a
no go for manufacturers and operators.

From your links you can see that a 140mm computer fan at 1000RPM is noisier
than a 120mm fan at 1200RPM. Even if the motor is quieter at the lower RPM,
increasing the blade size is more than able to compensate and make it overall
noisier, even with dimples and owl-wing tricks.

And it's not only the decibels that are the issue necessarily but also the
frequencies which can propagate quite far and by all accounts are pretty
disturbing. That low frequency hum that the blades produce by simply
displacing air while they move is not a problem with a computer fan's tiny
blades. And turbines come in farms.

------
tobinfricke
I tried making a spectrogram:
[https://twitter.com/nibot/status/1269347206445756416](https://twitter.com/nibot/status/1269347206445756416)

I tried using baudline[1] (a 20-year-old program!) but it didn't work out-of-
the-box on my current Linux installation. Instead I found something called
Sonic Visualizer[2], which, while not real-time, worked out of the box. Using
Pulse Audio 'pavucontrol' it was easy to configure Sonic Visualizer to use as
its input the 'monitor' channel, i.e. capturing the audio while the video
played on Twitter.

I'd love to get baudline working again since it's able to run in realtime.

It looks like the main tone is at 440 Hz and tones at 400 and 480 Hz come and
go. Not sure what to conclude from this. :-)

[1]: [http://www.baudline.com/](http://www.baudline.com/)

[2]: [https://www.sonicvisualiser.org/](https://www.sonicvisualiser.org/)

~~~
peterkos
every musician ever: A440 PROVEN BY THE BRIDGE

~~~
pmiller2
A440 is not as universal as you’d think. Tunings as low as A435 and as high as
A466 are in use even today.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_(pitch_standard)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_\(pitch_standard\))

~~~
Bud
"As low as A=435"? The reality is much stranger! Baroque groups such as
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and American Bach Soloists, and many others,
routinely perform at A=415, which is the standard accepted "Baroque" pitch
these days.

Earlier music is sometimes performed down around A=390.

------
whyenot
Apparently they knew about the hum in advance. Under CEQA they should have had
to do an Environmental Impact Report and hold public hearings. Someone is
bound to sue.

 _UPDATE: The sound is intentional. Or, at least, known about in advance.

According to a statement Saturday morning by Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz of the
Bridge District, "The Golden Gate Bridge has started to sing. The new musical
tones coming from the bridge are a known and inevitable phenomenon that stem
from our wind retrofit during very high winds." Cosulich-Schwartz adds: "As
part of the design process, the District did extensive studies on the impacts
of the project, including wind tunnel testing of a scale model of the Golden
Gate Bridge under high winds." Those tests, seen in a video here, showed that
the bridge "would begin to hum" when air passed through it more freely._

~~~
djmips
"musical"

------
mistersquid
This sounds so beautiful and desolate, reminding me of a combination of the
first two tracks from Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol 2, disc 2, in
particular "Blue Calx" and "Parallel Stripes" starting from 40 seconds. [0]

Thank you for sharing.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXBAU8HsAqk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXBAU8HsAqk)

~~~
bitcharmer
I don't think SF residents are as thrilled. It's overwhelmingly loud.

~~~
sevencolors
I imagine it’s just going to be ignored. Like the bart “screeching” they never
fixed.

~~~
Nitramp
That's amazing. According to this article, bart is now moving to tapered
wheels instead of plain cylindrical:

[https://sf.curbed.com/2018/6/11/17449460/bart-screen-
convers...](https://sf.curbed.com/2018/6/11/17449460/bart-screen-conversion-
wheel)

My understanding was that all rail systems since roughly forever use tapered
wheels. Primarily to reduce wear, by having the tapered wheels self center
instead of grinding against the track.

It's really odd that they seem to just roll that out in 2017?

~~~
frosted-flakes
> unlike the cylindrical profile which again just steers with the flange
> basically rubbing against the edge of the railhead.

That's crazy. That means that the wheels are actually slipping when going
around a corner, because the wheels are all the same diameter. Unlike conical
wheels, which are essentially self-steering.

Here's a great explanation by Richard Feynman:
[https://youtu.be/WAwDvbIfkos](https://youtu.be/WAwDvbIfkos)

How could the BART trains possibly have cylindrical wheels? Conical wheels
have been used on trains for ages, so that's seems weird. But doing some
research, it seems that, yes, they were cylindrical:

> Queensland Railways, for its first hundred years, used cylindrical wheels
> and vertical rails. With non-inclined rails and cylindrical wheels, the
> wheel squeal from trains taking curves on that railway was slight. After
> adopting coned wheels and inclined rails from the mid 1980s, the wheel
> squeal from trains curving at the same location and at the same speed
> decreased immensely. Some modern systems, such as Bay Area Rapid Transit
> (BART) in San Francisco, use cylindrical wheels and flat-topped rails; BART
> is now switching to conical tread to reduce the noise caused by flange/rail
> contact and loss of adhesion of one of the wheels on curves.

\--
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelset_(rail_transport)#Semi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheelset_\(rail_transport\)#Semi-
conical_shape)

------
ireflect
This is very similar to an Aeolian Harp, also known as a wind harp.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolian_harp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolian_harp)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtzSm76ppS4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtzSm76ppS4)

They are pretty cool art installations. The Golden Gate bridge may now be the
largest such installation ever built!

~~~
Balgair
Ok, I'm on board here. This is _really_ cool.

Yes, it cannot be a 24/7 thing, the harp/bridge is too loud. Also, putting
resonances into a suspension bridge is likely to be unsafe.

That said, like the chiming of church bells in a village, it may be used
selectively. I can imagine some Burners quickly putting up an adjustable
mechanism to have the bridge sing/chime.

Something that can point into the wind correctly (to some degree) and then be
readjusted to turn off. Possibly to make more than just one note, like a
carillon of bells in a bell tower.

Maybe at the tops of the hour it can turn on/off, like a church bell, to
signal the time. Or on special occasions like New Years Eve, the 4th of July,
etc. Or for swearings-in of a mayor's term, etc. Heck, even as a warning
system for earthquakes.

Having that loud of an instrument, powered by the wind, and then controlled by
a few hundred actuators or a bridge-worker/bell-ringer moving steel beams in
and out, it's just too good of an idea.

If something like that could be made to work, on such an iconic bridge, well,
that's a whole new industry. People have done 'love locks' for years now,
chiming bridges would be a great idea too.

~~~
TigeriusKirk
I joked with a friend today that with San Francisco being San Francisco,
someone will have a system for making it play Carol Of The Bells by next week.

~~~
1propionyl
Rigging something so that it plays Blowing in the Wind would be much more
fitting.

------
almost_usual
I was working outside yesterday afternoon and this humming was driving me
insane. I thought it was some instrument at a monastery nearby.

I can’t believe it’s the bridge.

~~~
person_of_color
> I can’t believe it’s the bridge.

Spat out my drink at this comment.

------
Animats
There should be an app for this.

To get direction and location, you need acoustic samples from multiple widely-
spaced locations, all synchronized. Human ears are not wide enough apart to
directionalize low frequencies, but with a baseline of tens or hundreds of
meters from separate cell phones, it's not hard. Run a correlator, line up the
samples, compute the hyperbolas of constant time offset, (like GPS and LORAN)
and find the target.

This needs an app with timing accurate to a millisecond or so. Can you get
that from cell phones? The built-in clock synchronization isn't that good. The
GPS receiver has more accurate time, but you may not be able to get at that.

~~~
Balgair
Nit: Human sound localization is 'good' from about 200Hz to about 1600Hz.
Other posters have the sound at ~440Hz, so humans should be able to localize
the sound fairly well.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization)

~~~
rdgthree
In this case, I think they're mostly referring to "The Hum"[0] that others
have been talking about, since the article is about the source of this noise.
When it's lower frequency and not this easy to locate, it would be great if
there were some other way to go about it.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum)

------
mdbauman
I hope somebody has a chance to make high-quality samples/recordings before
it's fixed. I doubt we'll get the chance to hear an instrument like this
again, accidental or not.

~~~
jedberg
> before it's fixed

Given that it was intentional, what makes you think it'll be "fixed"?

~~~
gkoberger
The article clarifies that "intentional" really just means "known about
beforehand", and I imagine if enough people are annoyed they could "fix" it.

------
_bxg1
I honestly think this is awesome and beautiful, though I might feel
differently if I lived nearby just because of how relentless it is.

I remember years ago I had the idea that if you could design construction
equipment to rotate/oscillate/whatever at frequencies that were harmonic with
each other, construction noise would become musical, almost like a very loud
set of wind chimes.

~~~
pierrec
There's a scene like that in the 2003 version of Zatoichi. But it's with
manual construction equipment, so the musicality is rhythmic rather than
harmonic.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk4oGCPGXz4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk4oGCPGXz4)

------
gibsonf1
I rode across the bridge in high winds last week and I thought that the bridge
might be failing somehow - the sound was almost unbearable - I thought a
serious safety issue was potentially occurring because of a structural
frequency effect. I guess the good news is that there is no emergency - bad
news is maybe ear plugs on bike rides on windy days.

------
Falloodude
Holy moly I can hear this from the Inner Richmond at night, WHILE IN MY BED. I
thought my tinnitus was doing something new, but it's the freaking bridge!

------
dvh
"In the future the most valuable thing will be silence" \--Voltaire

~~~
zimpenfish
Pretty much the only good thing about the lockdown was the massive reduction
in sound levels in London. Just off Old Kent Road which means traffic noise
dropped, plane noise disappeared[1], general hubbub of the feral children
vanished, no late night parties at the community centre, etc. It was as close
to blissful as I've encountered in London.

[1] Normally one every 5-10 minutes from 0500 to 23000 since we're on Heathrow
approach and not far off City's path.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Lots of good things about the lockdown from the aspect of peace, quiet,
nature, clean air, reduced light pollution, and more. It just comes at a cost
that society isn’t willing to bear.

~~~
carapace
[https://xkcd.com/2305/](https://xkcd.com/2305/)

~~~
ComputerGuru
It looks like you may have misunderstood what I was saying. The polls pictured
that linked to say America is united to defeat coronavirus even at such a high
cost. My argument is that this price _that nets us these wins of peace, quiet,
reduced pollution, etc etc_ comes at a price that society would not sustain
past this crisis.

~~~
carapace
Ah, sorry, I get it now. And I suspect you're right.

FWIW, my big hope is that we can reconfigure our economy to work without
conflicting with those wins. (The climate is still changing, so we have to
reconfigure anyway.)

------
woodrowbarlow
this is fascinating! i wonder how long it will take them to do something about
it? seeing the video, i almost wish they'd keep it, but i don't live nearby,
so...

i found a couple more video examples of accidental acoustic wind effects in
architecture -- but it looks like these aren't as ever-present and loud as the
Golden Gate Bridge is right now.

Beetham Tower - Manchester, UK:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8-MrU6lpwg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8-MrU6lpwg)

Freedom Tower - NYC, USA:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=25&v=nkjA3BvvOuw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=25&v=nkjA3BvvOuw)

in the Beetham Tower case, apparently the architect _lives in the tower 's
penthouse_. i bet they're frustrated that none of the fixes have completely
remedied the problem.

links from: [https://gizmodo.com/when-buildings-howl-a-primer-on-
architec...](https://gizmodo.com/when-buildings-howl-a-primer-on-architecture-
that-whis-1475982071)

~~~
noir_lord
Was in Manchester to see Metallica last year, Beetham Tower is spectacularly
ugly in person though I suspect it'll be around long enough it'll become a
much loved icon.

------
pengaru
Maybe they should find a way to generate electricity from the bridge, it sees
plenty of wind practically every single day for the same reason the SF bay is
great for sailing.

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US9444372B2/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US9444372B2/en)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_Bladeless](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_Bladeless)

~~~
zamadatix
The slats were added to reduce wind resistance. Generating power from wind
would greatly increase wind resistance.

~~~
rini17
It depends. Doubt that would affect wind resistance if the shape stays the
same, only the vibrations would be partially dampened by added piezoelectric
generators. Draining some mechanical energy by turning it into
heat+electricity might even improve the mechanical properties.

------
jadyoyster
Lisbon also has a bridge that you can hear from miles away: one lane in each
direction has a surface made of metal grating which makes a loud hum when cars
drive over it.

People who live nearby don't notice it (strange looks if you point it out) but
I think it's sad that it's impossible to escape the constant noise in certain
places.

~~~
ttsda
Another relevant bit about Lisbon's 25 de Abril bridge is the common
misconception that it was designed by the same company as the golden gate, as
it looks similar and also has a red paintjob, when it was in fact the company
that designed the Bay Bridge, which is even more similar (except for the
colour).

~~~
flak48
I guess there aren't all that many companies that can build such massive
bridges. Now I'm wondering where else I might have seen a bridge made by the
same people.

------
robomartin
They finally found a way to reduce the cost of real estate in SFO! Seriously,
you have to wonder how someone can actually think this is OK when it can be
heard from far away at all times and people crossing it are reporting it to be
unbearably loud.

My prediction is this will be added to the long history of engineering
disasters. It's OK, this is how we learn.

Here's another video I found:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa2j9b8486I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa2j9b8486I)

------
isoskeles
I’m curious if there can be an impact on the wildlife out here. Animals don’t
understand what the noise is, so can it disorient them in some way that could
have a harmful effect?

~~~
hedora
I’m sure the constant noise will negatively impact predators, at the very
least.

------
jimkleiber
Sounds like the song from Devs.

------
Balgair
Another 'cool' mega-instrument is the Earth Harp. Instead of transverse waves
(plucking) the strings, you use compression waves (pushing) in the strings to
make the vibrations. Due to some physics here, you then need a very large
resonator to hear the sounds. Essentially the Earth itself. Here's a good
video from the Burn at an Earth Harp performance:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c66w_pPnO-s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c66w_pPnO-s)

~~~
nyanpasu64
How do they get audible sounds from strings hundreds of meters long? Massive
tensions?

~~~
FreeFull
I think it's because the wave propagation speed through the strings is much
faster for compression waves, compared to the standard transverse waves.

------
klyrs
Worse mistakes have been made

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_\(1940\))

Pretty sure every bridge engineer knows that one. Amusing that the lesson
didn't generalize.

~~~
metalliqaz
Every engineer, not just the ones building bridges. I was required to take an
Engineering Ethics course that covered Tacoma Narrows as well as other
incidents, such as the famous Hyatt Regency walkway.

~~~
hedora
We covered software-induced disasters in my CS courses. This isn’t standard,
which explains a lot about our profession.

My two favorite examples were:

The Therac-25 — it’s just frontend GUI code. Why test it? What could go wrong?

The Siberian gas pipeline explosion of ‘82 — not technically an accident, but
it shows the problem with testing untrustworthy code to correctness. It was
also the biggest non-nuclear man-made explosion, at least at the time.

The Russians had stolen some pipeline schematics from US companies. The theft
was discovered before they stole the control software. Instead of stopping the
software from being stolen, US intelligence modified it so an integer would
overflow after a year (or two) of operation. The Russian economy would be
ruined if the pipeline wasn’t operational in less time than it would take the
bug to trigger, so it wouldn’t show up in testing.

When it triggered, it slammed a bunch of valves shut, causing multiple parts
of the network to explode at the same time.

The US military’s seismologists detected it, and thought the Russians had
detonated a new type of nuclear weapon. The military was going to escalate
until the intelligence service told them they were responsible for the blast.

Here’s a decent list of other incidents:

[https://royal.pingdom.com/10-historical-software-bugs-
with-e...](https://royal.pingdom.com/10-historical-software-bugs-with-extreme-
consequences/)

~~~
ghaff
Fun talk by Paul Fenwick from a long ago OSCON about various particularly bad
engineering failures.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkoyVPPXt5w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkoyVPPXt5w)

------
gregoriol
There is this building that has a similar kind of noise:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetham_Tower,_Manchester](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetham_Tower,_Manchester)

------
narrator
The second law of thermodynamics says that the energy of reducing the wind's
speed has to go somewhere. It's either going to push the bridge around, make
noise by generating vibration, generate electricity as in a wind turbine, or
some combination of the three.

~~~
konschubert
Well, I guess the goal may have been to let the wind pass through.

~~~
enchiridion
I think this fence was explicitly designed to block wind.

~~~
petee
The article says it was to reduce wind resistance. In a separate video, the
manufacturer states this was needed to offset for the new suicide net

------
zw123456
Does anyone know if they are planning on removing the slats? Maybe if they
randomly changed the spacing of the slats if it would alleviate the problem ?

~~~
japhyr
What's resonating? If the slats themselves are resonating, spacing them
differently won't help much. Then again, if it is the slats would a horizontal
brace running along the middle of the slats dampen or eliminate the resonance?

    
    
        |     |     |
        -------------
        |     |     |

~~~
petee
Dampers are probably only solution that doesn't involve rebuilding it. I
haven't seen a great photo, but one of the videos seems to show the rails are
square tubing...so could be vortex shedding?

Running a brace might not be a bad idea, but i could imagine that it might
just double the octave, and make it a bit quieter

~~~
petee
Update: Just saw the video from the manufacturer, and it's not tubing like I
thought I saw, but just flat stock steel. No wonder they're singing

------
dmode
I have been in the Bay Area for 12 years, but still cannot get over how
beautiful the bridge, Crissy field, Presidio, and Marine headland is

------
tempodox
I wonder whether this could have a destabilizing effect on the construction
over time?

~~~
madaxe_again
Yeah, I wondered this, given that you can use tones like this to, say, loosen
bolts.

------
rdiddly
I like how this article and lots of people's tweets mention '2020.' As if 2021
is going to be any better and things won't just remain permanently horrible!
Have a nice day!

------
aabajian
The expressway I-5 bridge in Seattle is notoriously loud and can be heard for
miles around. Interestingly, the sound from the busy topmost lane doesn't seem
to make it to the ground. You can verify this during the brief pause when the
express lane changes directions. I believe the traffic noise from the express-
lane is reflecting off the underside of the upper lane. Seems like a diffusing
layer on the underside of the upper lane would reduce the sound getting to the
city below.

~~~
nikanj
Alas, the US seems to care little about the lives of people who live near the
expressways.

------
hbarka
Reminds me of Google’s old Crittenden Lane buildings. The buildings have
exterior metal vertical slats over windows for shade control. They sing when
it’s windy.

~~~
jrockway
I never knew that. I am surprised there wasn't more chatter about how the
sound attracted or repelled mountain lions.

------
legitster
Oops. How did they not notice the noise while installing it?

~~~
metalliqaz
the people who designed it were probably nowhere near the people who installed
it

------
garfieldnate
I'm glad the tones produced are a whole step apart instead of a half step or
something smaller. I wonder if they took that into account in the design; it
always drives me nuts when two neighboring beeping electric turn-styles beep
in just slightly different tones.

------
JoeAltmaier
We just live with a very loud sound at our house. Run water for any reason.
When you stop, some 0-15 seconds later an enormous sound reverberates thru the
house. Plumber says its 'water pipes growing or shrinking, rubbing against the
straps'. But it goes on for 10-30 seconds. No water pipe in the world moves
that long/that much?

~~~
hedora
Definitely water hammer. Find a different plumber.

Be sure to review the first one on yelp after the second confirms.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Online I see that described as a 'hammering sound'. Not our problem. We have
an extended thrumming that lasts for many seconds. And it can be delayed from
the event by seconds. Is that definitely the same thing?

------
jejones3141
Has anyone gone out there with a sound level meter? If it's that loud, won't
it drown out sirens or car horns??

~~~
ComputerGuru
Sound perception is extremely complex and nuanced. The brain can tune out both
specific frequencies and baseline shift while the ears are more sensitive to
some frequencies over others. This sound is fairly pure and doesn’t really
overlap with other artificially created sounds you’d encounter about the city,
but I’m not an expert!

------
jtaft
According to following, engineers knew this sound would happen during high
winds from the west.

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/06/golden-
gate-...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/06/golden-gate-bridge-
san-francisco-sings)

~~~
asdfadsfgfdda
Here's a video from the company that built the new handrail:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-XCbsyRENI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-XCbsyRENI)

From your article: "The wind retrofit project is designed to make the Bridge
more aerodynamic under high wind conditions and is necessary to ensure the
safety and structural integrity of the Bridge for generations to come,”
Cosulich-Schwartz said."

This statement doesn't agree with the video's rationale for updating the
railings. I'm guessing the new suicide net increased the wind loading, so the
handrail had to be modified to reduce its wind loading. Without the suicide
net project, I doubt the handrails would be changed. But the suicide net
project is contentious politically, so they cannot admit this.

The new handrail uses long, unsupported plates. The old handrail was far more
rigid:

[https://www.bontena.com/contents/2018/12/Interview-with-
Rick...](https://www.bontena.com/contents/2018/12/Interview-with-Rick-Bulan-
Owner-and-Designer-of-Golden-Gate-Furniture-Co-18121102)

~~~
kenhwang
I'm kinda curious what the rational of the net is. If you're determined to
jump off the bridge, you can jump off the net too.

~~~
fragmede
The net is 20 feet below the bridge, so there's quite the adrenaline rush just
falling to the net. After getting caught by the net, you're subject to high
winds and _quite_ the view, straight down, of the ocean below. Jumping a
second time would be mechanically possible, but would not be easy for a human
to do. Without the net, it's a quick hop over the side so having the net
allows bridge workers critical time to go and respond to any attempts (which
is about one every-other-day).

------
baby
Did we just make the golden gate bridge more epic?

~~~
Dahoon
What makes it epic compared to other bridges? Well except being in many films
so more people knows about it.

~~~
Gibbon1
It's universally considered to be a beautiful bridge. Compare and contrast
with the old eastern span of the bay bridge.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland_Bay_Bridge)

You have to admit the old eastern span was just ugly.

~~~
baby
the bay bridge at night is not bad
[https://www.google.com/search?q=bay+bridge+at+night&sxsrf=AL...](https://www.google.com/search?q=bay+bridge+at+night&sxsrf=ALeKk013OYs8b5aiAAPV3ttm1YSaDmMkCQ:1591480293847&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwihqtOMlu7pAhURsJ4KHSFnCrcQ_AUoAXoECBUQAw&biw=960&bih=697)

~~~
Gibbon1
Talking about the old eastern span, the new span looks a lot nicer.

[https://seaonc-
assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2018/05/Old-E...](https://seaonc-
assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2018/05/Old-Eastern-Span.jpg)

------
ilaksh
I wonder if they will now need to install thousands of rubber vibration
dampeners wedged between the slats.. like large versions of tennis racket
string dampeners.. if that is possible to do without catching too much of the
wind trying to pass through. Maybe only on every other slat, or every three
slats, could reduce the noise at least somewhat.

So then someone would need to custom manufacturer all of those pieces of
rubber and then they would all need to be jammed in there. But then the
weather would probably degrade then over time.

I just wonder how many millions are going to be spent on mitigating this.

------
Kaius
I don't live in SF but have visited a few times. I would be incredibly angry
if someone arbitrarily decided to add a whole bunch of noise into my
environment for no good reason. However "interesting" the noise may be to some
people, having to deal with it in my daily life would be awful! I cannot
comprehend how a person or group could be allowed do something like that.

------
mrdrqr
This sounds exactly like the audio synthesis I did for a recent generative
sound app. I didn't know too much so a very high q band pass filter over brown
noise did the trick. Do that over several voices (not necessarily harmonic)
and you get something similar. Check it out:
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/night-
shapes/id1490540845](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/night-shapes/id1490540845)

------
digitalsushi
Check out The Singing Ringing Tree art exhibit:

[https://youtu.be/4B0hGyKV9qs?t=12](https://youtu.be/4B0hGyKV9qs?t=12)

~~~
dylan604
With the clouds in the background in the video and the shape of the
installation, my first thought on how to describe it would be a tornado rather
than a tree. Maybe growing up in Tornado Alley predispositions me that way. I
could see it as some sort of storm warning setup, steampunk style.

------
aritraghosh007
I'd assume that the engineers would have performed some form of stress tests
for these installations that were actually meant to afford wind resistance and
that the noise should have been noticed. Does anyone know how these conditions
are tested in a simulated large structural engineering lab?

------
dmix
Here’s a BBC doc on the “Bristol hum”
[https://youtu.be/QpeKot2X_O8](https://youtu.be/QpeKot2X_O8)

Makes me almost happy for my hearing loss from attending a Jack White concert
in a tiny bar where he maxed out the sound system. Although that’s probably
worse off.

------
jccalhoun
Apparently you can hear it from pretty far away and not just as you go over
the bridge:
[https://twitter.com/Shirin_Jnk/status/1269143410268467200](https://twitter.com/Shirin_Jnk/status/1269143410268467200)

------
razster
Wonder how this will affect housing prices? That is if it's there to stay...

------
pronoiac
Sounds more like a theremin than a kazoo to me. (A kazoo sounds funnier.)

------
mathgenius
I wonder what the space is in between the slats, or more precisely, the
period. Working out what pitch this is, and a bit of $v=f\lambda$ might tell
us which way the wind is blowing.

------
chiph
It sounds like a WW-II air-raid siren.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgaCNEQzL1Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgaCNEQzL1Q)

~~~
djmips
Someone said it's 440Hz and "something I read online" says the UK air raids
had a component frequency of 450Hz.

------
jkcorrea
I can't wait for the 99% Invisible episode on this :)

------
11thEarlOfMar
I should probably know this, but mechanical design packages include thermal
modeling and fluid dynamics modeling. How about modeling for resonating in
wind?

------
mleonhard
I heard it 2 miles away at the top of the Lyon Street Steps on Sunday
afternoon. I hope they change it to reduce the volume.

------
markvdb
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_organ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_organ)

~~~
therockspush
weird you picked that one, since on that wiki is the link to the wave organ in
SF. Its pretty close to the Golden Gate.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_Organ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_Organ)

------
refurb
There is a wind harp in South San Francisco that drives me nuts. It just
sounds like wind passing through power lines, a low hum.

------
philprx
My bet: depression rate is going to increase around the bridge where the sound
can be heard.

I wonder if you can hear it from top of Mount Tamalpais?

------
lukejduncan
The Black Lives Matter protest is marching over the bridge today starting at
Noon. I'm sure it'll be an eerie experience.

------
carapace
There's a marina in the East Bay that has the same effect on some of the
railings there. Much quieter though.

------
kurosawa
This is nice, it adds another dimension to the audio experience of the bridge-
bay 'composite-system'

------
bagels
It's been windy every time I was near the bridge. Is it howling every single
day now?

------
asawfofor
I wonder what Mills College’s Center for Contemporary Music (CCM) will make of
this.

------
odysseus
Reminds me of parts of the Half Life soundtrack. Desolate/dystopian.

------
omgwtfbyobbq
I love it, but I can also understand why it could be unbearable for others.

------
zobzu
Given it makes sound, it vibrates at high frequency. I've troubles
understanding why a vibrating bridge is "better for structural integrity". I
remember some of these in the past which broke

Bridge engineer cares to enlighten me/us?

------
TheSpiceIsLife
This reminds me... On the off chance someone reads this and happens to have a
copy:

I once ripped this mix from, I think it was di.fm or soma.fm, called 'Quiet
ambient preceding magnetic storm', but the only hdd it was on broke.

------
headmelted
DRINK FULL AND DESCEND.

------
djabatt
Clear case of no unit testing by the engineering team.

------
discobot
I wonder how this sound together with fog horns.

Should be glorious

------
_bxg1
> UPDATE, 1:30pm: The sound is intentional.

------
gpvos
I eagerly await the Tom Scott video.

------
sharkfinsoupmix
Cool. Btw, check out the wave organ.

[https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/wave-
organ/](https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/wave-organ/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_Organ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_Organ)

[https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wave-
organ](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wave-organ)

