Computing

Motorists with a dodgy car radio may find their prayers answered (for 30 seconds) in Japan. A team from the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute has built a number of "Melody Roads", which use cars as tuning forks to play music as they travel.

Grooves are cut at specific intervals in the road surface which emit a rumbling tone throughout a moving vehicle - The Melody Road uses these spaces to create different notes depending on the distance between the grooves.

The optimal speed for achieving "Melody Road playback" is a mere 28mph (doubling up as an incentive to obey the speed limit). "Driving too fast will sound like playing fast forward, while driving around 12mph has a slow-motion effect, making you almost car sick" wrote one Japanese blogger.