The Blast Lab at Imperial College, London, is a place where scientists study how explosions affect the human skeleton, and try to find ways to mitigate some of those effects. As you can imagine, this involves blowing stuff up fairly regularly and The Blast Lab is a pretty loud place.
But the team of students behind PLoS’ Inside Knowledge blog noticed something cool about that. The sounds in The Blast Lab weren’t just loud noises, they were loud notes. Edit them together, and you could reproduce a whole song, using nothing but sounds recorded in a working scientific laboratory.
In this video, the Inside Knowledge crew plays The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” on the Imperial College Blast Lab. In case you’re curious, here’s the breakdown showing what lab equipment the team used to replicate the sound of which instruments.
Bass Guitar: Main sensor output cable
Bass Drum: Blast Rig
Toms: Hammer & Storm Case
Hi-Hat: Oil Spray
Cymbal: Blast Plate
‘Vocals’: Laces to contain dummy leg during blast
‘Guitar’: Accelerometer cable & Fastening Strings
Submitterated by Ben Good