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Tag archives: sound
Physics of ski jackets, the eerie sound of thin ice, how figure skaters linger in mid-air
By Michael Banks and Hamish Johnston
Probably with an eye on the Winter Olympics, which starts today, two firms have just released new ranges of high-tech ski jackets. The Swiss technology business Osmotex and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology premiered their new ski jacket at the sport and sportwear international (ISPO) trade fair in Munich. It contains an “electro-osmotic” membrane called HYDRO_BOT in the fabric so that when membrane is switched on with a conventional battery it speeds up the transfer of salt ions across the membrane, taking them away from your sweaty skin. The creators claim it can pump out 10 litres of liquid per square metre per hour. For more details, see the video above.
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A tenner in space, why just 0.3% of LIGO bagged the Nobel, sounding-off in Havana
Tenner, nine, eight…: Mary Sommerville has lifted off (Courtesy: RBS)
By Hamish Johnston and Matin Durrani
Primary school children in Scotland have celebrated the launch of a new £10 note by launching it into space. Well, sort of. The Royal Bank of Scotland note was actually sent aloft on a high-altitude balloon with a camera to capture the event for posterity.
If you know your astronomers, you will recognize Mary Sommerville on the tenner. She was active in the early 19th century and famously predicted the existence of Neptune by its influence on the orbit of Uranus. She and Caroline Herschel were the first women to be members of the Royal Astronomical Society and she also wrote the bestselling science book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences.
There is much more about Sommerville in our podcast “Mary, Queen of Scottish banknotes“.
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Can a concert hall have a perfect acoustic?
Sound engineer Paul Waton and soprano Lesley Garrett discussing theatre acoustics at the Royal Opera House. (Courtesy: Brian Slater)
By James Dacey
Concert hall acoustics was the theme of a fascinating panel debate last night at the Royal Opera House (ROH) in London. Among the speakers was British soprano and presenter Lesley Garrett who shared her views on the acoustics of some of the great concert halls in which she has performed. She was joined by acoustics engineer Trevor Cox, acoustics consultant Helen Butcher and sound engineer Paul Waton, who has recorded a range of classical concerts for the BBC. Insight: the Art and Science of Acoustics was co-hosted by the Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics World.
Cox – who featured in our 2014 podcast about sonic wonders – set the scene by describing some of the fundamental acoustic considerations in designing a concert hall. We heard clips of Cox playing a saxophone in an “anechoic” chamber, followed by the same sax lick performed in an oil tanker – the place with officially the longest echo in the world. Cox’s point was to show the difference between high clarity at the one extreme and intense reverberation at the other. The sound wasn’t quite “right” in both cases. “Concert hall design is about finding a pleasing balance between these two extremes,” he said.
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The physics of twitter
By James Dacey in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Some university physics departments are modern, others are old-fashioned, but by and large they tend to contain similar features: a bunch of physicists and a selection of equipment such as microscopes and lasers. That was why I was caught by surprise in the physics department of the University of Buenos Aires when I stumbled across a collection of caged birds living in the corner of one of the labs. My curiosity was captured and I had to find out more.
Ana Amador in front of a cage of zebra finches.
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Surround no sound?
By Tushna Commissariat
A picture of the 3D acoustic cloak (left) and the cloak being tested in an anechoic chamber (right). (Courtesy: Physical Review Letters)
Invisibility cloaks seem to fascinate scientists and the public in equal measure, and every few months a novel design for some sort of metamaterial that cloaks either light or sound catches our eye, if you excuse the pun.
This week, we came across a group of researchers in Spain that claims to have designed, fabricated and tested the first “directional 3D acoustic cloak” that works for airborne sound. Previous designs of acoustic cloak work in water and air, but only if the sound propagates in 2D. Also, many cloaks only work within a narrow band of frequencies, limiting their uses.
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