Buzz
Have you ever been curious whether the mesmerizing, color-shifting DVD logo has ever truly hit a corner? It turns out it has, but the answer is more complex than you'd think. The blog The Lost Math Lessons did the calculations and explained the physics behind how the logo bounces off the edges of the screen. To pinpoint when the logo actually strikes the corner, they came up with a mathematical formula.
“Sure enough, we observe that the logo touches the top and bottom edges at multiples of 8 (d = 8, 16, and 24), and the left and right edges at multiples of 12 (d = 12 and 24). The first corner collision occurs at d = 24,” they stated. “This means the time it takes for the logo to bounce from one corner to the next can be determined by five variables: the time for it to cross one screen width, the screen height, the screen width, the logo height, and the logo width.”
For this experiment, they used the cold open from The Office's 2007 episode 'Launch Party,' where the Dunder Mifflin team watches the DVD logo bounce around a TV screen while ignoring Michael Scott’s speech.
“We can determine that it takes six seconds for the bouncing DVD logo to traverse one width of the screen, and if the screen resolution is 800 x 600 pixels, the logo measures about 140 x 140 pixels … Simply put, the DVD logo will strike a corner of the screen every 2 minutes and 18 seconds.” However, their chart shows that if the logo's size is 141 x 141, the cycle duration stretches to 45 minutes and 54 seconds, and if it’s 144 x 144, it takes 5 minutes and 42 seconds.
In 2008, a group of friends decided to have a few drinks and observe the logo bouncing on the screen long enough to figure out that it strikes the corner every three and a half minutes. (Of course, this depends on the screen’s dimensions.)
The bouncing DVD logo has become an obsession for many. In January 2019, FlareTV began live streaming the bouncing logo and kept the broadcast going for the entire year, allowing viewers to witness thousands of corner hits. (They describe a corner hit as 'when the logo perfectly hits the corner, simultaneously touching two walls.') The viewers estimate that a corner hit occurs after approximately 500 to 600 wall impacts, or about 550 bounces.
Equally devoted is BouncingDVDLogo.com, a website entirely dedicated to the now-famous logo, which many find oddly soothing to watch. Do some people have too much free time? Maybe. But considering the millions of views these videos have garnered, it's evident that plenty of people are seriously invested in solving this mystery.
