Wow! I must say I really enjoyed this lecture far better than the previous one. This one actually kept me interested and engaged in the discussion.
With that being said, I found some of the most interesting things examined had to do with the "white noise" mentioned near the beginning of the lecture. White noise was defined as the noise created by the "random collisions" of the particles in the air. You never really think about this because it is so quiet, but the truth is there is constantly some kind of noise occuring. Even if it is outside of the normal hearing range of humans, there are tones being emitted by colliding air particles. It's almost as if there is not ever TRUE silence in the earth's atmosphere. Another aspect I found interesting was the fact that "vibes in water move five thousand times faster than in air, and thirteen to fifteen thousand times faster through rock." This is because the closeness of the particles, and it also makes it easier for sounds to travel over larger distances. This is how whales, which emit the sounds that we're all pretty familiar with, can communicate with each other over hundreds of miles. It's pretty amazing to contemplate. Imagine if we, as humans, were somehow a part of the rocks of the earth and had ears that were specialized to hear the vibrations present in the rocks of the earth. We would be able to hear things from all over the world! Also, I found the sound of the vibrating sand dunes to be pretty awesome and breathtaking. I would love to hear that in real life, if possible.
In the animal kingdom, including humans, sounds play an even more amazing role now that the element of communication has been introduced. From a large perspective, it's pretty cool how emotions and messages can be transmitted just by an organism vibrating air particles a certain way. It's interest how frogs create a male dominance hierarchy based on how deep their voices are, called "expressive size symbolism". The deeper the voice, the larger the animal is. Clearly this is not the case with human beings, though.
This leads me to my next topic- the sheer difference between humans and animals in the way they use sound. For instance, there are "no stretched string membrane[s] in nature other than [in] humans" that are used to create sounds. I thought this was interesting, because we also have extremely developed body parts used to manipulate the sounds created by our vocal chords (lips, tongue, teeth, jaw movement, throat muscular movement). It just seems like we actually HAVE the most advanced sound-producing system as well as the most advanced system of communication.
Finally, I thought I would comment on the "hearing test" given during this lecture. I could actually hear the sound produced at 40 cycles/second, but i couldn't hear the noise produced at 18,000 cycles/second. It was pretty wierd to know that some of the people who listened to this lecture could hear something that I couldn't.
This leads me in to my response post to Steven...
Steven- It was really wierd, I agree, to find out that there "is an entire aspect of the world, another layer that is all around us", yet it is completely hidden to us. I was told by a worker at the Stone Zoo that certain macaws can actually see Ultraviolet light. It's so wierd to think that some animals have greater powers of perception than we do. As the lecture stated, "dolphins and bats go above the sound levels we can hear, while whales and elephands go blow them." It sure is humbling!
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