Inspired by Adi Shamir's TWINKLE optical
device for finding smooth numbers, which works at GHz, I wrote an audio device for finding smooth
numbers, which works at low kHz. In absence of a good, screeching acronym, I'd call it
Dysphony in b-Smooth.
The idea is to convert the smaller prime factors of numbers into sound. The code does this
by keeping n
counters, each of which is increased modulo its individual prime.
At the moment, these are the first 1000 primes. After every increment the counters
that contain a zero are collected and a sine wave is constructed from the associated
frequencies (index*(2000/n) + 40
Hz) at an amplitude proportional to
the logarithm of the prime (so that the frequent divisors 2,3,5,etc have a low impact).
Each sound lasts a small fraction of a second. If a loud noise is audible, it is
the representation of a number with many different and/or larger prime factors.
The scientific value of this is approaching zero from the left, but it was a nice
exercise to have the computer produce sound after my last attempts in 1987 on
an Atari ST.