Fuel for Thought

The Sound of Colors

Everyone knows that we see colors and hear sounds. If you have the gift of sight and hearing, you learned at an early age to identify colors on sight and you also learned to recognize the sound of many different things.You didn’t learn the green color of the grass by listening to it, you had seen it. You didn’t see the thunder in the sky but you heard it. Over time some truck drivers can develop a sense of color from sounds.

Just like Pavlov’s dogs, we humans are highly trainable or rather we can be conditioned just the same, but can we really know a color by a sound? If you are a truck driver with a weigh station bypass transponder, then yes, yes you can. At least for the colors green and red. On the prepass transponder, a green light will indicate that you can bypass the weigh station ahead. At the same time the transponder gives an audible alert. This sound is unique to the green light. Consequently, a red light on the transponder indicates that you must pull into the weigh station. This light also comes with an audible alert. There can be no confusion between the two sounds. The audible alert that comes with the red light has a different pattern and sounds more ominous (okay, maybe that last part is just me, but it definitely sounds more urgent). The audible alert that accompanies the green light is still the same tone, but a different pattern and less urgent (again, maybe it is just me about the urgency of the alerts, but they are distinctly different). 

So, can you hear colors? Well, not really, but we can be conditioned to know certain colors by certain sounds. If you have a weigh station bypass transponder, you may know without looking for the light which color is illuminated.

Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves. 

   - Lewis Carroll

See you down the road, 

Greg