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Pinholes and Plastic Wrap Make Solid Walls "Transparent" To Sound
First time accepted submitter benonemusic writes "Researchers have devised a means of making sound transmit easily through rigid surfaces, including walls. The process relies on creating small holes on a wall, and covering them on one side with a thin covering made from plastic wrap."
I thought we were trying to figure out how to keep sound from coming through the wall, not help it!
Fantastic, now we have walls that sound like they aren't even there. What's next, ovens that are just as hot on the outside as they are on the inside?
Researchers find that by putting a glass to a wall, helps sound travel through rigid surfaces as well.
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As a resident crotchedy old-man neighbor, who would ever want this?!
Neat
This technology is going to be widely used by builders of apartments and condominium complexes. They are constantly striving to build thinner and thinner walls. This is going to revolutionize the industry.
It would be nice to use plastic wrap to make walls impenetrable by sounds of penetration.
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Ok, build a bunch of drum heads into a wall and notice they act just like, well, drum heads.
Brilliant. An acoustic diaphragm.
Can't think of a single use for this other than eves dropping where no electronics were allowed.
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I think the bathroom across from my office has this "technology" already.
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Find a solution for walls that allow sound to get through. I can hear my neighbours fart from the other side of the apartment.
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Because those guys have making walls (and floors and ceilings) transparent to sound completely mastered.
If it is mono-directional it has application as sound proofing.
If it is bidirectional then the listener can be heard doing what listeners do as well as the "target".
If regions could be made "transparent" then 3D audio precision might be possible.
Interesting.... but I am not going to dig holes in my walls.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
I would expect that these walls are rather one way with the transmission of sound, as in a one way mirror.
But, by alternating the side of the holes that are covered with plastic wrap, we could then make these walls truly two way with regards to sound transmission.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
A team of Japanese and South Korean researchers has devised a means of making solid walls virtually transparent to sound.
Now you will have to pay extra to SEE the band.
The sound goes through. Oh this is such a break through! No one ever thought of this! No one would ever think that a hole might alter the optical properties as well? Well it does! You can see through a wall with holes in it! It's amazing!
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The 'walls' were thin sheets of metal - yes - this is an interesting breakthrough, but will not help much for thick walls.
The effect is strongly frequency dependant, and relies on tuned membranes.
It will not work for signals such as voice.
Or at least - it will not work as well as it would for tuned signals.
It is unclear if you can get a useful effect with a large number (say 50) of tuned membranes covering the voice band.
You can perhaps also do interesting novel things with tuning, if this is possible.
You can have a 'transparent' wall - that mutes certain tones - for example if you want to notch out a train whistle that goes past every day.
Audio prisms are another application that springs to mind.
Actually, I'd be much more interested in how to make solid walls transparent to the frequencies used in 802.11b/g/n/ac transmission, particularly the higher frequencies that are more easily stopped by walls.
For example, if I drove a very long nail through a wall, could it serve as an antenna that would help propagate wireless from one side to the other?
Researchers have devised a means of making sound transmit easily through rigid surfaces, including walls. The process relies on creating large holes in a wall. Researchers have discovered the large holes do not require that either side need be covered with plastic wrap, thus making the process more environmentally friendly.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
A pinhole and plastic wrap also make it transparent to visual frequencies!
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Apartment complexes had this technology in their walls (and ceilings and floors) years ago.
Every motel I ever checked into has had these walls installed.
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My apartment has had walls that transmit sound since it was built in the 1950s.
How to mess with/prank the blind.
So to get sound to go through walls what you do is remove a bunch of pieces of the wall. This is essentially a window, but instead of having it all in one chunk you spread out the area. BRILLIANT!!!
Punching holes through walls allows the sound to travel through them more freely!
If you can quickly cycle the pinholes open and closed then you could put a speaker on the other side and dynamically control where the sound apparently originates.
The scientists then found that by increasing the size of the holes and removing the plastic, sound could then be heard much more clearly.
But, wouldn't it just be easier to put speakers in the other room and get on with your life?
Well, I guess maybe if you were in the room next door, and wanted to hear what was going on without the occupants knowing, you could use this method.
I get it now. Perfect for NSA spying ops.
> "If you focus sound to a spot much smaller than the wavelength," ...
Sonic Screwdriver anyone?
Walls that are transparent to wifi would be most helpful inside my house, but not the outside walls.
Some complementary work done at UT-austin
Instead of a membrane matching the impedence of a "meta-material" made by punching regularly spaces in a wall (kind of like a meta-material drum), the UT-austin work describe holes made with a "meta-material" approach. Basically a hole with some transverse tubes cut a regular intervals to create resonances that change the effective impedance parameters allowing pretty much lossless transmission through the hole (kind of like a meta-material horn).
In my experience, the sound attenuates as you plug the holes. I prefer 90 minute mud.
It is truly amazing how sound blasts through a single, tiny hole.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
So if you take a solid surface... and make it not solid, then things of appropriate size can pass through the holes? ...
Is this obvious science week or something?
Like transducers haven't been used in the history of mankind. Like ever. Acoustics is what acoustics is, dumbass.
-- Jimtown Kelly
I would like to cite the apartment I lived in my 2nd year away as prior art. In all seriousness, it would be cool if there was a way to toggle it. Sometimes you want to hear the stereo in the next room without cranking the volume. Sometimes you want quiet.
I know this is /. but even so..
From TFA:
"The wall with the bare holes seriously hinders the transmission," the team reported in the June 13 issue of Physical Review Letters. "[B]ut with the membrane installed the transmission becomes, as expected, almost as good as with no wall."
It's about the membrane and it would seem it's not just about letting sound through but making almost as if the wall wasn't there.
..is, by definition, no longer 'solid'.
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I can think of many applications for this technology! Here are a few that would be very useful in audio setups that I have had:
In my last house I had a 5.1 setup. Unfortunately my right front speaker was immediately behind my computer monitor, so everything always sounded a bit wonky. If this tech could be applied to monitors and televisions, it would make it easier for people with limited space to set up bulky sound systems. Even where I am now, this tech would give me more desk space since my computer speakers could be BEHIND the monitor instead of requiring me to spread them out more.
Also in said last house, the kitchen was downstairs, the big proper stereo was upstairs and the rest of the house was elsewhere, which meant that we needed a separate stereo for the kitchen and anybody doing housework on the middle floor was stuck doing it in silence.. With this technology installed, one stereo would have been enough for the whole house.
Speaker design! This opens up the door to make a speakers with a wider array of aesthetics. Bowers and Wilkinson would be proud.
I'm sure that there are many other applications that I'm not even close to aware of. It seems like this tech could easily be turned on and off by panels that cover the holes, so it really does give us an added level of control over sound.
Breaking news! If you put holes in a wall and poorly cover them, sound can pass through! We also have discovered that punching holes in a boat and patching them with paper allows water to leak in. -____-