Tag: sound

Posted in Life & Happiness

Clap

Posted on by Jinavie

It takes two hands to clap. No matter how great a plan you have, you cannot achieve anything by yourself. That is why we search so desperately for someone to slap our hand palm-to-palm. But this idiom has many meanings. Just as we cannot clap with one hand, when two hands miss or move away from each other, there is no clap. If two people want to achieve something then they must co-operate to produce synergy. But does that mean we can just carelessly clash our palms together?

If you clap with each hand as stiff as a board, it only hurts both people’s hands and produces a dull, bad sound. But if you loosen your hands a little and slap with a smooth motion, you get a clear, awesome sound. When two people act stubbornly and only stick to each other’s opinions and pride, they will achieve nothing and instead hurt their friendship, possibly even resulting in utter failure. To bend a little and give way to the other person – that is how two people can produce co-operation, understanding and connection. That is the secret to grasping the philosophy of 1 + 1 = 3.

1 + 1 = 3

(NB: The picture is from the basketball manga Slam Dunk where the two protagonists pull off one of the most epic high fives in fictional history. If you recognise it, you are awesome.)

Posted in Science & Nature

Echo

Posted on by Jinavie

Because sound is a wave, it is reflected by a surface. An echo is when this reflection is sufficiently loud and is quite common in everyday life. It is heard especially in places such as a mountain top or in a canyon because the surface needs to be quite far for our ears to detect the echo. If it is too close, as in within 340m – the distance covered by sound within one second – the echo overlaps with the original sound and cannot be heard. However, if a room is lined by a smooth surface, such as a bathroom or opera house, an echo may be heard. In these cases the delay between the sound and its echo is so close that it merely sounds as if the sound is amplified, thus explaining why singing sounds better when in a bath.

An echo can be very powerful, an example being St Paul’s Cathedral in London, England. This building is built with a giant, hemispherical roof that can amplify a whisper from one corner and replay it audibly at a corner on the opposite side of the room.
It is also very useful as it is used in technologies such as sonar and ultrasound machines to see through objects.

The word “echo” originates from a nymph named Echo from Greek mythology. Echo was instructed by Zeus to distract Hera from noticing him having an affair by chatting to her constantly. Hera caught on to this and cursed Echo to only be able to repeat what others say. After that, Echo could not even say “I love you” to the man she loved, and eventually lived in the mountains where she repeated whatever travellers said in an attempt to speak.

An interesting fact about echoes is the common myth that a duck’s quack does not echo. This is incorrect in that it does in fact echo, but since a quack is soft and fades quickly, the echo is usually too faint to be audible.