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Science

Duck's Quacks Really Do Echo 46

Posted by Hemos from the what-about-nintendo's-duck-hunt dept.
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. "
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Duck's Quacks Really Do Echo More

Duck's Quacks Really Do Echo

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  • But... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bluesman ( 104513 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:47AM (#6898483) Homepage
    Do they weigh the same as a witch?

  • WHO thought this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @06:56AM (#6898515) Homepage Journal
    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? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KDan ( 90353 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:23AM (#6898657) Homepage
      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

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

      Don't be absurd -- everyone knows that you colour the edges of their beaks with a green marker to improve their sound.

    • Re:WHO thought this? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, there could have been, and still might be, some sort of human perceptual quirk that prevents us from hearing the echo of a duck's quack. Just like there are optical illusions, there can be auditory illusions as well.

    • Re:WHO thought this? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by redtail1 ( 603986 )
      The scientist who worked on this problem was interviewed on the BBC this morning. He admitted the result was obvious but it generated a lot of interest in science which was a good thing given that most people's education in science stops at age 16.
    • ...are doomed to misquote it, poorly. The limit imposed by the British House of Commons was 15 miles per hour.

      Interesting discussion [chipublib.org]. 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.
      • And those who don't understand what is being talked about are doomed to make asses of themselves.

        In the early days of trains, it was believed that any attempt to exceed 60 MPH (one mile a minute) would cause such undue stresses upon the human body that it would fall apart, violently.

        This was, of course, disproved when trains routinely exceeded 60 MPH.

        I was not speaking of some stupid law, but rather a stupid belief in a non-existant physical law.
        • I understood well what you were talking about. The House of Commons legislation was passed specifically because people would explode at speeds much above 15 miles per hour (reading between the lines, because too much air would be forced into their mouths) - or asphyxiate (because the slipstream would create a vacuum in their lungs) - go figure.

          It was an improvement on the herald with the red flag.
          • And you would be able to provide a link to some document about this?

            While it was quite difficult to reach a mile a minute pre-railroad, even the most swaybacked nag can reach 15 MPH, so unless the cluelessness of the people involve was legendary (granted, we ARE talking about politicians here) believing 15 MPH fatal would be rather trivial to disprove.

            Hell, even WIND will routinely exceed 15 MPH.

    • Re:WHO thought this? (Score:4, Funny)

      by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @09:24PM (#6906372)
      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 (Score:4, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:02AM (#6898532)
    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. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by You're All Wrong ( 573825 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:21AM (#6898647)
    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.
    • 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.

      Um....*water*, reflecting most sound? Sound travels damned far on water.

      • Water is below a duck. By about 10cm. Therefore at a distance of 30m, say, the difference in path length between the reflected sound and the direct sound is 0.07cm.
        Do you really expect to be able to distinguish between sounds of a second duration that are 2 millionths of a second apart? For all human-hearable frequencies you'll simply get reinforcement (which explains why sound travels so well over water).

        If you're next to a lake, near water level, like a duck, the echos you here are from the objects surro
        • Do you really expect to be able to distinguish between sounds of a second duration that are 2 millionths of a second apart? For all human-hearable frequencies you'll simply get reinforcement (which explains why sound travels so well over water).

          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

  • Old news (Score:5, Informative)

    by Alereon ( 660683 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:23AM (#6898656)

    This Urban Legend was definitively put to rest in 1998 [straightdope.com].

  • Next up (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @07:51AM (#6898816)
    Can swallows really carry coconuts?

    I can't wait until those hard-nosed Brits get down to cracking this serious mystery!
  • Redundancy [snopes.com], anyone?

  • IGnobel! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Outland Traveller ( 12138 )
    Someone needs to nominate these guys to the IGnobel prize team :)

  • Two scientists and a duck... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spudley ( 171066 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @09:06AM (#6899397) Homepage Journal
    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
  • ... get this freakin' duck [homestarrunner.com] away from me!
  • This story "broke" in late July. I had a discussion about it here [mediagab.com].
    • RedWolves2 [slashdot.org] wrote: "This story "broke" in late July. I had a discussion about it here [mediagab.com]."

      I guess everything involving ducks will echo.
      • Does that mean you are predicting that the Anahiem Mighty Ducks are going make a echoing return to the Stanley Cup this year?
        • RedWolves2 [slashdot.org] wrote: "Does that mean you are predicting that the Anahiem Mighty Ducks are going make a echoing return to the Stanley Cup this year?

          LOL! On the one hand, if these ducks are "Mighty" enough, then a resounding echo should occur. On the other hand, Anaheim is flat place that lacks the geography needed for any form of echoing.

          But as a nerd, I must say "huh?" I have heard of Debian Linux cup ("Constructor of Useful Parsers") and CUPS for printing. Or perhaps the Ducks will repeat if they ha
  • Professor Cox: "You know, that supplemental insurance."

    Daisy Duck: "AFLAC!!!"

  • A more detailed version of the article... (Score:5, Informative)

    by mforbes ( 575538 ) on Monday September 08, 2003 @01:57PM (#6902630)
    is available [bbc.co.uk] on the BBC's news site. Apparently the article on Ananova [ananova.com] 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.

  • ... where the tests [salford.ac.uk] were done.

  • Here's how the duck had us fooled all this time... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Insightfill ( 554828 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @11:16AM (#6911167) Homepage
    You see, the duck has a sense of humor. He was actually only quacking once, then opening his mouth in time to the echo(s) - a "bill-sync", if you will, of his own echo.

    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.

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