When you watch a sci-fi movie, you can expect to hear futuristic laser sounds— but at a lake? Not so much. Turns out, however, that Northerners have been hiding a little secret— one that completely blew YouTuber Cory Williams away.
As a former MySpace star, Cory started posting YouTube videos when he realized the clips he uploaded onto the site were getting more traction than the MySpace platform. Developing the character “Mr. Safety”, the YouTuber lived in Thousand Oaks, California, up until 2013, when he moved to Anchorage, Alaska.
As you can imagine, the move brought a load of culture shock— an aspect Cory decided to chronicle in a series of video blogs. But of these videos, one went completely viral, taking the internet by storm.
In the video, Cory and his girlfriend visit Edmonds Lake, which has frozen in the frigid temperatures.
Approaching the ice, he suddenly has an idea: “This would be the perfect spot to skip a rock,” he says. “It would never go in!” Grabbing a stone to test his theory, the YouTuber throws the rock onto the ice— only to be astounded by the sound that comes roaring back.
When Cory skips the rock, you suddenly hear bizarre and futuristic, laser-like noise filling the air.
He’s totally amazed by the phenomenon, turning towards his girlfriend while wearing a look of childish excitement and surprise. “I’m tripping!” he says. “That was amazing!”
“I’ve never heard that before! I need more rocks!”
When Cory uploaded the video, people were very confused. Some thought the YouTuber had simply added the noises after the fact— but according to Northerners and scientists alike, the bizarre frozen lake sounds are, indeed, a real phenomenon.
Here’s how it works:
For the most part, the noise depends on the type of ice and acoustics involved. As Cottage Life explains, water under the ice is not frozen. So, when you throw a rock it causes the ice to vibrate— almost like a cymbal or drum after being struck. The ice then vibrates at supersonic speeds, moving away from the point of contact. The effect is similar to the way water ripples when a pebble is dropped. Another way to understand is to simply imagine the sound “bouncing” between the water and the ice.
The created noise will depend on two things: the type of ice and the distance you are from the contact. High-pitched noises are created by ‘clear ice’, ice formed under non-snowy conditions. ‘Snow ice’, on the other hand, formed after fallen snow saturates with water and freezes, creates lower-frequency noises as the grains in the ice absorb additional impact.
The distance you’re standing from where the rock hits the ice will also affect the noise produced. As Mark Hamilton, a professor of acoustics at the University of Texas, told Live Science, higher and lower frequency sounds travel at different speeds. When you throw a rock on a frozen lake from a distance, you’ll first hear the higher tones followed by a downward chirp. “It’s as though you ran your finger from right to left across piano keys,” he noted. However, if you’re too close to the point of impact, you won’t hear the split between frequencies— instead, hearing only a simple crack.
Since being uploaded, more than 12 million people have tuned in to hear the bizarre laser sounds.
“Very cool sounds coming off that frozen lake. Never heard that before.”
“I used to live next to a lake in Maine, and this was a common thing for me and my brother to do in the early winter!”
“Clearly the people saying this is fake have never been near a real frozen lake. I’ve done this ton of times, and this is exactly what it sounds like.”
Hear the noise below!
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