For The First Time Paralympic Athletes Could Hear Their Medals

Paralympic medal winners now look and sound like champions.

If you followed the 2016 Rio Paralympics, you probably saw the athletes shaking their medals close to their ears at the podium.

For the first time ever, the Paralympic medals have a new audio feature: when shaken, they have sounds. It was designed for Rio 2016 to help visually impaired athletes differentiate between the three kinds of medals. The sound is made by tiny metallic spheres that rattle inside, creating the “medal music” when athletes shake them.

Here is swimmer Bradley Snyder listening to his gold medal.

Gold medals have 28 small steel pellets, silver medals have 20, and bronze have 18. The idea is to provide a sensory experience for visually impaired athletes.

{youtube}uMBDrhYMfd8{/youtube}

Paralympic medals are usually a bit different than those of the Olympics, as they have messages in braille, for instance. In the current Paralympics, however, athletes are incorporating the habit of shake the medals to hear their sound. This could be considered another legacy of Rio 2016.

Here are other pictures of Paralympic athletes shaking their medals:

#y101fm #alwaysfirst #rhythmofthecity #entertainment