The brown note, sometimes called the brown frequency, is an infrasonic noise frequency that has a particular effect. Hence the name: If you play a note at this very low frequency, it’s known to make you lose your bowels. That’s right, a sound frequency that causes you to run to the potty. Only, it’s not true.
According to experts, there is currently no frequency known to man that will make you poop. But some may ask, what is the brown note?
The brown note myth likely started as an internet hoax that somehow gathered steam and took off because it’s kind of funny, and no one knew for sure whether it was true.
While it’s not real and it does not make you go to the bathroom, says Matthew Wright, a professor of acoustics at the University of Southampton in Southampton, United Kingdom, “the sound is supposedly lower than the sounds that we can hear.”
Humans can hear sounds in a frequency range from about 20 Hz to 20 kHz. We might be able to sense sounds that are at an extremely low frequency at a high enough volume or amplitude, but we can’t hear them.
