If you have been following the Rio Paralympics, you would have noticed some of the athletes shaking their medals close to their ears on the podium. This is because, for the first time in Paralympics history, tiny steel balls have been added to the medals' interior, which makes them rattle.

This has been done to allow visually impaired para-athletes to identify which type of medal it is, because the number of balls inside differs with the type of the medal. Gold medals have 28 tiny steel balls, silver ones have 20, while the bronze ones have 18, reported Buzzfeed. The medals also have “Rio 2016 Paralympic Games” written on them in Braille.

Judoka Wilians Silva de Araujo of Brazil listens to his silver medal (Image credit: Reuters)
Table tennis gold medallist Natalia Kosmina (centre) of Ukraine listens to her medal (Image credit: Reuters)

Apart from this, the Paralympics medals are identical to the ones given to Olympians last month. The front side of the medal has the traditional laurel leaf and the Rio 2016 logo, while the reverse side has the engraving of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, reported Quartz.

Here is a video showing how the medals were made: