This is one of my absolute favorites, because it’s so unexpected and unusual… the setup looks quite harmless, but it makes a sound worse than scratching your nails on a chalkboard. If you can’t find the weird ingredient, just use water and you’ll get nearly the same result (it just takes more practice to get it right). Ready?


NOTE: DO NOT place these anywhere near your ear… keep them straight out in front of you.


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33 Responses to “The Best Parent-Annoyer Ever”

  1. This is awesome! Thanks Aurora!

  2. shokoufa3 says:

    wowza!!!

  3. No, shoe polish would be way too messy.

  4. jocelyngelms says:

    could you use shoe polish

  5. No, wax won’t provide the desired effect. It is best to use violin rosin or water.

  6. ericksonnationmom says:

    would wax work instead of water?

  7. jleto8910 says:

    YOU have succeed in annoying me to death and am a kid so it must work on my dad he gets annoyed soo easily (time to have some fun! )

  8. Try making a cone out of a sheet of paper maybe?

  9. Melanie Church says:

    What if you don’t have that kind of cup or a paper cup? What else can you use? Thank you

  10. Mary Butkevicius says:

    My daughter discovered that if you cut slits in the cup, it’s not as loud. She also used thread with no water, and it worked well.

  11. Try it and see! If it doesn’t work, what else might work?

  12. Peter Richter says:

    Can we use glue and water if we don’t have a violin rosin ?????

  13. Peter Richter says:

    And it sounds like someone slipping and making a screeching sound !!!! It is so funny !!!!

  14. Peter Richter says:

    I tried it on my dad just 1 time and I asked him if it was annoying and he said yes! I am going to do it again tonight !!!!!! And the same thing will probably happen with my Mom!!!!

  15. Peter Richter says:

    My favorite experiment yet !!!!

  16. That sounds like a science experiment just WAITING for you to test out! You tell me which one works best!

  17. Mehak Chawla says:

    Could we also try with vegetable oil,or sugared and salted water or juice?
    Does it work with any liquid?
    I’ve tried it before with Yakult bottles before and it is really annoying.

    Mehak

  18. jennifer lutz says:

    Im Jennifer lutzs daughter I love it im ging to scare my dad

  19. Kristi Kerr says:

    haha!!! did it on our dad, he was like ” what the???” lol. mom was up here laughing! lolololol!

  20. Sue Forster says:

    I made it sound like a really demented laughing guy, it worked better with water than the rosin?
    THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH. I can’t wait to freak out my Dad when he gets home 🙂

  21. Natalie Roth-Corti says:

    Totally freaked out my cat, and cant wait to troll my neighbors!
    >:) BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

    -Peter, Son of Natalie

  22. As mentioned in a previous comment, the string itself vibrates due to the slip-n-stick movement of your fingers along it. When the string vibrates, it causes the air around it to vibrate, and the vibration traveling through the air creates sound waves. Even without the cup, as long as you could keep the string stretched tight as you moved your fingers along it, you would here the sound created by the vibrating string. So when the string is tied to the cup as shown in the video, the vibration of the string gets transferred to the cup where the two are connected, causing the base of the cup to vibrate too. The base of the cup has a very large surface area, and all of that area vibrates the air around it, creating more sound waves. Because the surface area of the cup’s base is so much larger than the area of the string, the cup vibrates much more air and makes much more sound than the string could alone. You can see another example of this kind of sound amplification using a tuning fork and a flat thin solid surface, like the side of a wooden cabinet for instance. If you strike the tuning fork on a hard surface you can hear it ring with a clear tone, but it’s probably pretty quiet if it’s more than a couple inches from your ear. If you strike it again and then hold the handle end flat against the solid surface (the side of the cabinet), you should hear the same clear tone but much louder, since the fork is now vibrating the entire side of the cabinet which in turn vibrates the air next to it, creating more sound waves. This is how physical sound amplification works.

  23. Nazliatul Aniza Nordin says:

    Hi Aurora!
    How does the cup amplify the sound?
    Thanks!
    -Dayini (12) 🙂

  24. Pam McKay says:

    this would annoy my mom so much!!!! BYE!!!!!!! ;

  25. Juliet White says:

    I was right my family was freaked out but this is a warning never use surf board wax I have to get a new piece of string.

  26. Juliet White says:

    When I got singed in to this site it was under my Gramz name so its not my Gramz saying this “I AM GOING TO FREAK OUT MY WHOLE FAMILY!”

  27. The one you’re on works the same way as the buzzing hornet and the air horn… by vibrating the string. The violin rosin makes a slip-sick surface with your fingers, so your fingers slide and then stick, slide then stick while traveling along the string. This slip-n-stick sets the string vibrating. The sound is amplified in the cup (meaning that the cup makes the sound go louder!)

    You can also put this rosin on the outside of a long, thin tube or metal pipe and get a ‘singing rod’. Hold the rod in the middle and slide two fingers long the length and you’ll set up a wave that sounds eerie!

    When you hold a ruler (or thin metal tube) in the middle and tap it on the table it makes a lower pitch sound than if you hold it on the end and tap it. Same thing happens when you strike a water glass (with a fork) that’s filled partway with water. The pitch changes when you change the amount of water in the glass.

    The same high pitch sound is also made sliding your fingers along the thin tube with your fingers. Compression waves (longitudinal waves) form throughout the bar making the high pitch. Each time you slide your fingers along the bar, you are making the increasing the strength of the wave (making a louder sound).

    You can see what a compression wave looks like if you stretch a slinky out along the floor (have a helper hold the other end) and give it a quick jerk toward the your helper. You’ll see how the energy moves down the length of the slinky. (This is a compression or longitudinal wave.) The high pitch sound of the parent annoyer is the result of a longitudinal wave which travels throughout the string.

    Note: If you hold the ruler in the middle and tap the table, you’re actually setting up a transverse wave, which have longer wavelengths and thus sound much lower. When you jerk the slinky up off the floor quickly and then back down again, you’ll see a transverse wave.

  28. We just watched some of the supersonic experiments and wow what fun we have! I wanted to know if you have a file where you explanation of why some of the results of the experiments come up. For instance, the annoying noise maker why do we get the squeaky sound…my son will figure it out but I am the one that needs the explanation!

  29. Milenda Reichman says:

    My son is driving me crazy with it. He is chasing his foster brother around the house “laughing” at him. And to a 6yr old, it is “totally cool” to hear. Though he has done it so much that the string he used, started to fray.

  30. Look like our server had a hiccup. Go ahead and try again.

  31. Anita Mullins says:

    Hi,

    After trying two different browsers (Chrome and Firefox), this video did not come up.

  32. sevy keble says:

    Oh, sorry I could not comment this last time, but my brother can make this sound like a REALLY evil laugh!
    sevy keble 🙂

  33. sevy keble says:

    We found out that it worked without dunking it in water, but it worked a lot better with water. This totally freaked out my mom. I’m going to freak out my dad at dinner tonight!
    sevy keble 🙂