full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Abe Davis: New video technology that reveals an object's hidden properties


Unscramble the Blue Letters


So a couple yares ago, I started working with the folks that created that software, and we decided to pursue a crazy idea. We thought, it's cool that we can use software to visualize tiny motions like this, and you can almost think of it as a way to extend our snese of tcouh. But what if we could do the same thing with our ability to hear? What if we could use video to curapte the vibrations of sound, which are just another kind of motion, and turn everything that we see into a microphone?

Now, this is a bit of a sgtrnae idea, so let me try to put it in perspective for you. Traditional microphones work by converting the motion of an internal diaphragm into an eericlctal signal, and that diaphragm is designed to move reiadly with sound so that its motion can be recorded and interpreted as audio. But sound causes all objects to vibrate. Those vtinarobis are just usually too sutble and too fast for us to see.

Open Cloze


So a couple _____ ago, I started working with the folks that created that software, and we decided to pursue a crazy idea. We thought, it's cool that we can use software to visualize tiny motions like this, and you can almost think of it as a way to extend our _____ of _____. But what if we could do the same thing with our ability to hear? What if we could use video to _______ the vibrations of sound, which are just another kind of motion, and turn everything that we see into a microphone?

Now, this is a bit of a _______ idea, so let me try to put it in perspective for you. Traditional microphones work by converting the motion of an internal diaphragm into an __________ signal, and that diaphragm is designed to move _______ with sound so that its motion can be recorded and interpreted as audio. But sound causes all objects to vibrate. Those __________ are just usually too ______ and too fast for us to see.

Solution


  1. vibrations
  2. touch
  3. subtle
  4. capture
  5. years
  6. strange
  7. electrical
  8. readily
  9. sense

Original Text


So a couple years ago, I started working with the folks that created that software, and we decided to pursue a crazy idea. We thought, it's cool that we can use software to visualize tiny motions like this, and you can almost think of it as a way to extend our sense of touch. But what if we could do the same thing with our ability to hear? What if we could use video to capture the vibrations of sound, which are just another kind of motion, and turn everything that we see into a microphone?

Now, this is a bit of a strange idea, so let me try to put it in perspective for you. Traditional microphones work by converting the motion of an internal diaphragm into an electrical signal, and that diaphragm is designed to move readily with sound so that its motion can be recorded and interpreted as audio. But sound causes all objects to vibrate. Those vibrations are just usually too subtle and too fast for us to see.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
tiny motions 3
silent video 3
nearby loudspeaker 2
loudspeaker played 2
perceptually invisible 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
nearby loudspeaker played 2


Important Words


  1. ability
  2. audio
  3. bit
  4. capture
  5. converting
  6. cool
  7. couple
  8. crazy
  9. created
  10. decided
  11. designed
  12. diaphragm
  13. electrical
  14. extend
  15. fast
  16. folks
  17. hear
  18. idea
  19. internal
  20. interpreted
  21. kind
  22. microphone
  23. microphones
  24. motion
  25. motions
  26. move
  27. objects
  28. perspective
  29. pursue
  30. put
  31. readily
  32. recorded
  33. sense
  34. signal
  35. software
  36. sound
  37. started
  38. strange
  39. subtle
  40. thought
  41. tiny
  42. touch
  43. traditional
  44. turn
  45. vibrate
  46. vibrations
  47. video
  48. visualize
  49. work
  50. working
  51. years