Pyrite is a mineral that looks very much like gold and is often mistaken for the precious metal, which has given it the nickname of "fool's gold." It is pretty abundant and common but doesn't have the same value as actual gold.

Although if it is extremely common, there is a fairly rare type of pyrite that is crystallized in a radial shape, meaning that it appears disc-like in shape. Pyrite discs date back a whopping 300 million years.

Here's a question that you might not immediately ask about a 300 million-year-old pyrite disc — what does it sound like? Dmitry Morozov, an artist from Moscow, was recently able to use a pyrite disc to create a sound object or synthesizer, which uses the Arduino Nano. The device is called Ra, and it uses lasers to scan the irregularities on the disc surface, transforming this data into sound.

"I set out to create a self-made laser sound reader which would be able to produce sound from various uneven surfaces, using minimal resources to achieve it," said Morozov in a statement. "Thus emerged the idea to construct an instrument using the pyrite disc and a self-made laser sound reader."

The production of the device was commissioned by the Sound Museum in St. Petersburg, and the museum now has Ra in its collection. Check out the video below to see just what a 300 million-year-old Pyrite disc sounds like.

Via: Arduino Blog