dancing hubcaps

yesterday, in the middle of a discussion about aliasing with a friend, i stumbled upon this passage in wikipedia's article on the wagon-wheel effect:

Rushton (1967[3]) observed the wagon-wheel effect under continuous illumination while humming. The humming vibrates the eyes in their sockets, effectively creating stroboscopic conditions within the eye. By humming at a frequency of a multiple of the rotation frequency, he was able to stop the rotation. By humming at slightly higher and lower frequencies, he was able to make the rotation reverse slowly and to make the rotation go slowly in the direction of rotation. A similar stroboscopic effect is now commonly observed by people eating crunchy foods, such as carrots, while watching TV. The crunching vibrates the eyes at a multiple of the frame rate of the TV. Besides vibrations of the eyes, the effect can be produced by observing wheels via a vibrating mirror. Rear-view mirrors in vibrating cars can produce the effect.

now, this sounds ridiculously cool in theory..  in ideal conditions, it would mean that you can get spinning objects to appear to rotate along with a melody you're humming, with varying speed and direction depending on the pitch of each note, perfectly synchronized, and in such a way that only you can see it.  but i've been humming at passing car wheels all day and all i've been seeing are lots of odd looks from strangers at the bus stop.  i'm not giving up yet, though;  i'm going to try again tomorrow, after doing some math to try and figure out the frequency ranges i need to be targeting in order to get the effect at various typical car speeds for various typical wheel sizes.  i'm not stopping until the hubcaps dance for me.