Just in case you have, as a child, heard the myth that ducks' quack does not produce an echo, and have never outgrew the myth (possibly by never even thinking about it ever since), a potential IgNobel winner for next year has been published and, yes, ducks' quacks produce echoes. Shelley has the details of the experiments and the link to the sound-file of the quack and the echo. Ah, the power of the scientific method! Though alternative methods have been proposed:
Now, the question remains: which echo-chamber does the duck prefer: its Left Wing or its Right Wing?
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Although I wasn't initially aware of this myth, a technician in my lab informed me that an oft-quoted scientific myth is that a duck's quack doesn't echo. Now, as a student of acoustics, I found that hard to believe. And indeed, a research team at the University of Salford decided to actually test…
"Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world." -Carl Sagan
Nothing lasts forever in this Universe, not even the seemingly timeless stars in the sky. At any moment, any one of the brilliant, twinkling points of light from across the galaxy could run…
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, many of our birds fly away in the fall. Other, very cool birds from even farther north, depending on where you live then arrive. But just about now, where I live, we are at the tail end of the migration out and not quite at the migration in, so this is a good time…
"You will be a restless wanderer on the earth" -Genesis 4:12
Today, a few of us visited the Twin Cities Home School Creation Science Fair of 2013 at its new location. The fair used to be held in the historic Har Mar Shopping Mall but for some reason it has wandered up the road and across Snelling…
Oh yeah, I saw that myth on Mythbusters. If Im remembering it right, the reason it was so hard to hear the echo was because it sounded the same as the quack itself.
The episode that brought us the immortal Jamie quote "quack, damn you."