Why does it sound like the ocean when we put seashells to our ears? In this article, we look at the answer to this question.
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Some people say that this sound is the blood pressure in the body. But what we hear is not blood pressure.
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Another common explanation for the rustling sound in a seashell is that you hear your own blood flowing through the veins. However, scientists say that with exercise; They were also skeptical of this claim, stating that it did not change or intensify with pulse or other changes in blood pressure.
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Others think that the whistling sound heard is air passing through the shell. However, when tested in an insulated room, this sound is not heard even though there is air in the environment. So that’s not the reason either.
It is true that even if we are far from the sea, we can hear a sea shell close to our ears and hear a sound. The most suitable seashells for this are the ones in the spiral shape.
SO WHAT IS HEARD?
So what are we actually hearing?
In fact, this sound, reminiscent of waves, is the sound of the environment we are in at that time. Due to its structure, the seashell transmits sound by converting it to different frequencies. This structure, which works just like a musical instrument, brings the sound around us to a frequency similar to that of waves and transmits it to us. So if we’re anywhere near the sea, what we’re hearing might really be the sound of the waves. In fact, you don’t even need a seashell for such an effect. We can hear the same frequency sounds when we try it with an empty coffee cup. The volume of the sound will increase in proportion to the closeness and volume of the cup to your ear.
“You hear ambient or background noise because of the physical properties of the shell,” says Andrew King, director of the Oxford University Center for Integrative Neuroscience and head of the Oxford Auditory Neuroscience Group. King says the “hard, curved surfaces” inside the shells reflect sound waves.
Other structures with openings, such as empty bowls or bottles, can also produce similar sounds, according to scientist Shruti Deshpande. Deshpande says, “When ambient noise hits the inner surface of this hard shell, multiple reflections occur and certain frequencies within the ambient noise are raised. Whether it’s a seashell or an empty bowl that has nothing to do with an ocean, hold around your ear a phenomenon called ‘resonance’. “You experience ocean-like sound quality as a result of the phenomenon.”
Of course, if you are at the beach, the ambient sounds you will hear when you hold a shell to your ear will contain at least some sea sound.
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