Earlier this year, we relayed a story about how Janet Jackson's song Rhythm Nation just so happened to include the resonant frequency of 5,400 RPM 2.5-inch hard drives commonly used in laptops for many years. When played on (or even near) those laptops, the song would cause the drives to malfunction—and it was such a widespread problem that Microsoft incorporated code into Windows XP to filter out that particular frequency. Sounds unbelievable, but it's true! Audio experts, laptop makers and Windows developers all worked together to confirm the story—so when I was re-reading the 2022 Microsoft blog that first made the story news, I suddenly found myself wondering what other damage precisely the right (or, I suppose, wrong) sound frequency could do.
For example: Could you cause a chicken's head to explode with just the power of sound?
