The sound of LEGO® bricks has a name: plinthophony

Two LEGO® bricks clicking together. Everyone knows the sound, nobody had a name for it. We propose one: plinthophony.

Switch the bin on and read on. You will hear someone searching through a bin of bricks the whole time, with the odd click, drop or waterfall in between.

Where the click comes from

A LEGO® brick holds because of what LEGO® itself calls clutch power. The studs on top wedge between the tubes and the walls of the brick above. That wedging takes force. You press, the walls flex outwards by a fraction, and as soon as the stud clears the edge they spring back. That spring-back is a tiny impact. The brick vibrates for a moment, and that vibration is the click you hear.

The fit is no accident. LEGO® has moulded in ABS since 1963 and states on its own history page a moulding accuracy of 1/200 mm. The very first bricks had no tubes inside. They held less well, and so they clicked less too.

Science has looked at it

In November 2020 Physical Review Letters published Mechanics of a Snap Fit by Keisuke Yoshida and Hirofumi Wada of Ritsumeikan University in Japan. They studied the simplest snap connection there is: a rigid cylinder inside a thin, flexible shell. Their conclusion: a snap-fit goes together easily and comes apart with difficulty because of the combination of shape, elasticity and friction. According to Brick Fanatics, Wada started because of the clicks around his own house. LEGO®, pen caps, battery covers.

A name for the sound itself is not in there. Engineers say snap-fit, LEGO® says clutch power. Both describe the connection, not what you hear.

Plinthophony

Hence this word: plinthophony. From the Greek plinthos (πλίνθος), brick or block, and phōnē (φωνή), sound. It covers the whole family. The click of two bricks joining. The rustle of a hand searching through a bin. The rattle of a bag emptied onto the table.

The word has no official status. It is in no dictionary and no journal. It is a Lakea proposal. Feel free to use it.

The family

Plinthophony is the umbrella term. Every sound from the bin gets its own word, built from the same Greek kit. Press the button and you hear it.

• Plinthocrotia (κρότος, click): two bricks joining. The click this piece started with.
• Plintholysis (λύσις, loosening): the crack when you pull two bricks apart again. With or without a brick separator.
• Plinthoptosis (πτῶσις, fall): a single brick falling off the table and bouncing a few times before it ends up under the cupboard.
• Plinthopsithyria (ψίθυρος, rustle): a hand searching the bin for that one blue 1x2 plate. The best-known sound of all.
• Plinthorrhoea (ῥοή, flow): the waterfall. A full bag or box emptied onto the table or the floor.
• Plinthoseismia (σεισμός, shaking): a closed box you shake to hear whether anything is left inside.

And one without a button: plinthalgia (ἄλγος, pain). Stepping on a brick barefoot. The brick makes no sound. You do.

ASMR

On YouTube and TikTok all of this goes by ASMR, autonomous sensory meridian response. The term dates from 2010 and comes from Jennifer Allen. The first peer-reviewed study is by Barratt and Davis in PeerJ, 2015. Hard evidence for what happens in your head is still thin. ASMR describes what you feel. The words above describe what the brick does.

Plinthophony EDM

A click has no pitch of its own. Make the filter narrow enough and the brick rings for a split second on one note, with the plastic tick still on top. That is how the track below is built: the kick is the thump of a box, the snare a handful of bricks landing at once, the hi-hat the rummaging rustle, and the melody and chords are tuned clicks. 126 beats per minute, C major, all generated in your browser.

LEGO® released the sound itself

On 1 February 2021 LEGO® White Noise came out: seven tracks of about half an hour each, recorded with 10,000 bricks. Two titles say enough: It All Clicks and Searching for the One (Brick). The album is on Spotify and Apple Music.

Making your own plinthophony? Prices for the Large Creative Brick Box (10698) sit side by side on Lakea.

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