Talking Glaciers

Climate change is studied and measured in a variety of ways. We see ocean levels rising, we feel temperatures getting warmer around the world, but what do we hear?

Scientists around the world have been studying glacier melting by listening to them, and it seems that the glaciers have a lot more to tell us than show us. It’s not an easy task to listen to a glacier, it’s actually an incredibly dangerous line of work. It’s easy to imagine how being close to a giant, melting, wall of ice puts you at risk for massive chunks to break off and crush you or rock your boat quite violently. Once close enough, a hydrophone -underwater microphone - is put in position to start gathering data.

To know what the hydrophone is listening for, small scale tests can be done in a lab with a tiny glacial ice cube. As the cube melts, ancient air bubbles trapped inside get released, pinching off into the water with cute pops and fizzes.

But when we’re talking about glacier fjords we’re certainly not talking about little ice cubes, and when those bubble pops are multiplied by the millions on a larger scale, the oceans sing with pops, cracks, hissing, and crashing that has become one of the loudest ambient noise in the ocean. As these sounds are studied more and more, useful data becomes apparent. More melting means more bubbles, and that means more noise.

Along with the bubbles, microphones will pick up the much more thunderous sounds of sheets of ice crashing into the water. Those glacier walls extend almost all the way to the bottom of the fjord though, and ice breaking off below the water as opposed to above the water can be almost impossible to see. Hydrophones reveal these events, however.

Listening to all these sounds that glaciers make help researchers to understand the speed at which they are melting much more accurately, ultimately giving us more insight into how ice and sea will affect the climate in years to come.

The Ear's Worst Enemy

First thing that comes to mind? Nails on a chalkboard. This sound has always made the hair stand up on the back of witnesses necks.

Turns out that this sound, along with others in similar pitch, all affect parts of the brain responsible for making us feel displeasure. A study done at Newcastle University in England found that the top 10 worst sounds for the human ear are:

1. A knife on a bottle

2. A fork on a glass

3. Chalk on a blackboard

4. A ruler on a bottle

5. Nails on a blackboard

6. A female scream

7. An angle-grinder (Power tool)

8. Squealing brakes on a bicycle

9. A baby crying

10. An electric drill

Hopefully you turned down your computer volume while listening to those. What exactly is going on here? Well, the unpleasant sound waves enter your ear, shoot through your cochlea (inner ear) to the cells responsible for registering frequencies from 2000hz - 5000hz, your auditory nerve brings this signal to your brain, and your brain's amygdala (responsible for negative emotions) freaks out a little.

Most sounds DON'T activate the amygdala, it just so happens that these unpleasant 2000hz - 5000hz sounds do. There is a possible primitive link here. Take a look at the top 10 list again you'll notice that the only two naturally occurring sounds are a female scream and a baby crying. These are distress calls, and it makes sense that our brains would be most sensitive to these sounds. If distress calls were in a more pleasant range of pitch, then we'd be less likely pay so much attention to them and act on them. 100,000 years ago, for example, a scream could have signaled a predator or other danger. It just so happens that modern humans have invented all sorts of things that make sounds in that same unpleasant range.

For now, stay away from chalkboards and bad brakes, tend to your screaming children, and find a babbling brook nearby if your ears need break. Or check out our article on the "Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response" for some feel good sounds.

Thumbnail Photo by: Ben Husmann, Flickr

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Cody Ball and filed under Article and tagged nature.

Freeze water with sound

How to freeze water with sound-read more-->

Don't Burst My Bubble

Don’t Burst my Sound Bubble!

Cymatics is the study of visible sound and vibration. Great, now being a visual person I went in search of an explanation of cymatics that I could See:

Onward to YouTube, my generation’s encyclopedia of knowledge!

Video: Photographer Alexander Lauterwasser.

Video: Frequencies Sound + Vibration

Cymatics has also been used to propose that sound isn't actually a wave, but a bubble that expands outwards from the point of origin. If my eight grade science teacher was right when he said that sound is like throwing a pebble into a pond and watching the ripples. If those ripples form in a circle around the pebble, does that mean sound ripples outward in a circles as well?

Two of my favorite Visual representations of sound:

The Big Bang Theory

Sherlock Holmes

Another great use of visual sound that is virtually always at your fingertips is your iTunes Visualizer. Try it with different types of music and observe the differences in how the images react to the beat.

YOUR TURN! EXPERIMENT

Cymatics is a science that is well within the reach of any household, or scholastic institution.

What you might need:

* A sound machine: computer, phone, cd player, record player, even an old tape player will do.

* A decent speaker system (you might have to do a little research here, you want something that when you touch it will vibrate a little under your hand, and something you can lay flat.

* A sturdy piece of relatively thin cardboard or card stock to lay over your speaker.

* Sand, or salt, or sugar, a powder that doesn’t stick to itself, to place on your cardboard. (Consider placing plastic wrap over your speaker so gritty goodness doesn't infiltrate the speaker shell.)

* You can also try putting a bowl of water over your speaker. Try adding food coloring once you’ve got the water vibrating, to see how the coloring moves within the water.

Now where is Smell-o-vision, and when will that technology catch up with the rest?

Thumbnail photo by: Courtney Greene, Flickr

Posted on May 4, 2015 by matthew polis and filed under Article and tagged nature.

SURDS

SURDS is either an irrational number (think… square root of 2) or a voiceless sound in speech (think B, C/S, F, H, K, P, S, T). It’s the sounds you make that don’t require the vibration of your larynx and are almost always produced by the forced exhalation of air.

Consequently they are the sounds that usually give your Sound Department the biggest headaches, and are your Dialogue Editor’s best friends (and sometimes their worst enemies….think….frenemies).

Allow me to explain:

For this demonstration we’re going old school: Ribbon Microphones. Click on the picture for a brief and easy introduction to ribbon microphones:

Ribbon microphones specifically and microphones in general are delicate instruments that use the velocity or pressure of air particles to capture sound.

When that forced exhalation of air that produces the majority of these surd sounds hits your oh-so-delicate microphone it causes something of an overload to the delicate filaments inside giving you that overly loud sound that presses on your eardrums and can be none to pretty.

Beat-boxers are the KINGS of Surds. They use them in combination with other sounds created by their voice box simultaneously to make phenomenal “music.”

Notice how he is holding the microphone at an angle from his mouth? That is to prevent the air exiting his mouth from hitting the microphone dead on.

Another studio fix that can be found in other videos is a POP FILTER. It usually consists of a material like nylon stretched over a hoop that diffuses the speed and pressure of the air exiting your mouth before it hits the microphone (it also has a secondary use as a saliva catcher).

Easy Homemade Pop Filter:

Embroidery Hoop: Purchasable at any sewing/craft store. They don’t need to be big, five inch diameter or even smaller should work just fine. For this plastic is better, less likely to have a piece that will snag on the nylon, but wood works as well.

Nylon Panyhose: Purchasable just about anywhere
Some way of holding it in front of your microphone

Step 1: Take one leg of the pantyhose and stretch them out by hand to loosen up the fiber.

Step 2: Depending on the size of the pantyhose you got, this goes one of two ways.

BIG SIZE: Slide the inner ring of the embroidery hoop INTO one of the legs, down to the foot, you want the material nice and stretched but not ripping. Once it is in the foot and nice and tight, put the outer embroidery hoop over the inner embroidery hoop, tighten, and then cut off your extra material. VOILA double pop screen.
SMALLER SIZE: Cut open one of the legs of the pantyhose so you have one single sheet of material. Lay it over the inner embroidery hoop. Again, you want it tight. Place the outer hoop over the inner hoop, make sure your fabric is nice and tight all around. Then tighten the out hoop to keep the fabric in place. Cut off the excess fabric. VOILA pop screen.

Step 3: Place in front of you microphone, I’ve seen this done with clamps, with a glued on dowel rod. Hung from the ceiling. Whatever works for you.

Pop Filters are great for preventing a microphone overload and a peaked audio file (ENEMY), resulting in a good, clean, sound. Dialogue editors who might be replacing a line of dialogue for a better version from a previous take, very often use those strong P's, B’s and T’s that have nice peaks on their wave form files to give them a reference to help line up the replacement words within the dialogue. (FRIEND)

Thumbnail Photo by: Brian Stalter, Flickr

Posted on May 3, 2015 by matthew polis and filed under Article and tagged nature.

ASMR

Have you ever closed your eyes and just let soft sounds take over? Maybe a distant thunderstorm, a whisper, or that math teacher's voice that used to put you to sleep? If you ever get tingles down your neck, spine, or sometimes even your limbs, you are experiencing Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR).

This is a phenomenon that has not yet undergone any scientific research, but hundreds of thousands of views and comments on YouTube provide evidence to support it. YouTube hosts the majority of ASMR sounds, which tends to include vloggers whispering into their microphone. These videos take a number of different forms. Some include a vlogger whispering a story, others include role-play haircuts and facials with complimentary scissor or bubble sounds, and some are just simply recordings of certain objects being tapped or touched.

It does take some experimenting to find what sounds personally give you goosebumps. Maybe it's the sound of hair being brushed, or the sound of Bob Ross' voice as he paints. There is an entire community of "Whisperers" out there just waiting to give you chills. Aside from a pleasurable experience, ASMR seems to help relieve insomnia, anxiety, and panic attacks according to YouTube comments.

Maybe eventually there will be some scientific way of measuring the response to prove its existence, but for now just put on some headphones and become a part of this new trend.

Thunder & Rain

Hair Brush

Someone sound like Bob Ross

Thumbnail photo by: Valentina Calosci, Flickr

Beer Suds

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Cody Ball and filed under Article and tagged nature.