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. "

Comments

But...

[Bluesman]

Do they weigh the same as a witch?

WHO thought this?

[wowbagger]

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?

Re:WHO thought this?

[KDan]

Apparently it's just due to the fact that the duck's quack's echo is a lot harder to hear - hence some sort of popular rumour must have sprung up saying that it actually doesn't echo. The study confirmed that it's hard to hear and that it does nevertheless echo (which is blatantly obvious for anyone with some sense, of course).

Overall, a thorough waste of time and money, this study...

Daniel

Re:WHO thought this?

[iggymanz]

What next - somebody trying to evaluate the efficacy of NaCl in trapping avians when applied to their aft flight surfaces?

To test the efficacy of salting a bird's wings in order to trap it, I put a 25 lbs. bag of Morton Salt on the wings of a sparrow, a duck, and then a canary. The birds were in each case successfully trapped. Also, they were completely flattened. Interestingly, the muted quack the duck made did not echo.

Duck Dodgers

[AtariAmarok]

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.

Peter Rees of Mythbusters already did it.

[You're All Wrong]

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.

Old news

[Alereon]

This Urban Legend was definitively put to rest in 1998.

Next up

[Hard_Code]

Can swallows really carry coconuts?

I can't wait until those hard-nosed Brits get down to cracking this serious mystery!

Two scientists and a duck...

[Spudley]

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?"

Is it just me, or does that sound like it came straight out of a Farside comic? :-D

A more detailed version of the article...

[mforbes]

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.