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Duck's Quacks Really Do Echo
troc writes "Finally that age-old myth of the duck's quack has been overturned. It has long been thought that the duck's quack did not produce an echo, so some boffins with spare time and a duck did some experiments.
"
Do they weigh the same as a witch?
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
This sounds like a load to me.
Sound echos. All sound. A duck's quack is sound. Therefor, a duck's quack will echo. QED.
What magical properties would cause a duck's quack not to reflect off a flat surface, or to magically cancel itself out?
This sounds much like the "If you exceed 60 MPH, you will explode" myth that was commonplace back before trains exceeded 60 MPH - the blitherings of people who don't know what they are talking about - much like someplace else we all know of.
Point me to one physicist who would published any public work saying "A duck's quack won't echo." Just one.
What next - somebody trying to evaluate the efficacy of NaCl in trapping avians when applied to their aft flight surfaces?
www.eFax.com are spammers
"You'd have to find a mountain duck," said Professor Cox
Found one!
The original "no-echo" conclusions came about because the test subject was Daffy, and the location was space.
In space, no one can hear you quack, let alone hear an echo.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=duck+quack+group :alt.folklore.*+author:rees&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sel m=6b6b4da6.0308281728.3653b272%40posting.google.co m&rnum=1
Summary:
a duck's echo sounds very much like the original quack (distribution of frequencies), and thus is hard to distinguish from the original sound. Also ducks' typical environments (plants, absorbing most sound) means that the echo is quiet. Therefore it's very hard to actually hear a distinct echo from a duck in its natural environment.
You can _contrive_ a sitution where you can hear the echo trivially, though.
YAW.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
This Urban Legend was definitively put to rest in 1998.
Can swallows really carry coconuts?
I can't wait until those hard-nosed Brits get down to cracking this serious mystery!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Redundancy, anyone?
Someone needs to nominate these guys to the IGnobel prize team :)
First scientist: "Say, Bob, I've got a bit of free time, so I'm going up the mountain with my duck. You wanna join me?"
:-D
Is it just me, or does that sound like it came straight out of a Farside comic?
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
... get this freakin' duck away from me!
This story "broke" in late July. I had a discussion about it here.
Professor Cox: "You know, that supplemental insurance."
Daisy Duck: "AFLAC!!!"
SCO (noun.)- A Slimy Corporate Ogre. Often seeks free money.
is available on the BBC's news site. Apparently the article on Ananova was edited a little too completely for space, and lost the explanation of the reason for the study.
The full article makes clear that Prof. Cox's work is used in the design of facilities like concert halls, train stations, etc. In other words, the duck was incidental. What he was concerned with was the qualities that reduced the echo.
Suggesting his work deserves an IgNoble (as someone earlier in the thread offered) begs comparisons to Sen. Proxmire. Try to be a little better informed before you criticize so broadly.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
...are doomed to misquote it, poorly. The limit imposed by the British House of Commons was 15 miles per hour.
Interesting discussion. Later articles enthuse about journalists carrying news about England at a steady 15 miles per hour, such that news happening in London on Monday might be read by even the most isolated Highlander by Friday.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Take one duck, find a known echo canyon, point the duck towards the canyon, then squeeze said duck. MUST have a duckcrap resistant shirt, sooner or later after carefull note taking repetitions you have a quack and crap answer. THE END TO THIS FOR BEGININGS ARE STARTING TO COLLIDE!
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
Here's a somewhat offbeat indirect reference (although I'm suspicious of the date, because a Committee report only a year later said "the substitution of inanimate for animal power, in draught on common roads, is one of the most important improvements in the means of internal communication ever introduced").
That gave me a name, Nicholas Wood, and this amusing-in-hindsight quote: "It is far from my wish to promulgate to the world that the ridiculous expectations of the enthusiastic specialists, that we shall see locomotives travelling at the rate of 12, 16, 18 or 20 miles an hour; nothing could do more harm towards their adoption, or general improvement, than the promulgation of sich nonsense." From this expert opinion, it's possible to adduce that the cluelessness of the people was indeed legendary. "Enthusiast" in those days carried connotations akin to "zealot" or possibly even "madman". (-:
I'm a bit busy, else I'd dig out the paper version and key a chunk of it in for you.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
RedWolves2 wrote: "This story "broke" in late July. I had a discussion about it here."
I guess everything involving ducks will echo.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
... where the tests were done.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Um....*water*, reflecting most sound? Sound travels damned far on water.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Of course, people saw this duck "quacking" twice in a canyon years ago and then failed to hear the echo, and thought it was magic or something.
Sort of like the bird in the "Monty Python" Beethoven sketch with John Cleese, where the bird was just opening and closing his beak to taunt the poor Beethoven.
Some of the smarter ducks had even mastered the "repeat and fade" trick that the goose never really figured out.
it doesn't. Would Snapple really lie to me?
--- We have a pool and a pond, the pond would be good for you.
Sorry, misinterpreted you there. Thought you were going for a muffling argument instead of reflection. As far as that goes, you're right, there's nothing in a duck's environment at a reasonably low angle to provide decent reflection.
As far as water, it can carry sound extremely well across the surface, largely because water is just a better conductor of anything (sound, heat, etc) than is air. Sitting on a fishing boat at night when it's fairly quiet, you can hear conversations near a mile away. So if the angle were right, I expect it might be possible, if you were far away from the duck, to hear its echo first (through water) before you hear the original through air. At that point, you would get the delay not through the slightly longer path length through water, but rather from faster transmission .
Finally, there's one time when you certainly can hear a duck's echo - when it's flying (I didn't say I wasn't above cheating!). Then it definitely reflects off water. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat