As a member of the
Acoustical Society of America, I receive their quarterly newsletter, cutely/appropriately entitled
Echoes. It's fun, since instead of just being about speech (which I'm used to reading about), there's information on all sort of research in acoustics: bioacoustics, underwater acoustics, musical acoustics, all sorts of neat stuff (you may remember
my trip to one ASA meeting, during which one of the plenary speakers was a professional yodeler)!
Anyway,
Echoes appeared in my mailbox today with this little story in their "In the News" segment. Maybe you'll find it interesting, too:
Smoke alarms could save more lives if the noise they made were a little less shrill, according to a story in the 18 October issue of New Scientist. Researchers played nine different alarm sounds to adults in the early part of their sleep. They found that people awakened fastest when exposed to a square-wave signal with a fundamental frequency of 520 Hz plus some other low tones. Most fire-related deaths at home, whether the houses have smoke alarms or not, happen in the first 3 hours of slumber, when people are sleeping most deeply.
It kind of reminds me of another news story I heard a few months ago that was about police cars switching from sirens to a low, rumbling droning sound that's supposed to be
felt, rather than heard (in case your radio is on too loud). Since I live in earthquake country, that particular idea strikes me as a bad one. But the smoke alarm findings are kind of cool. Or
hot.
Sigh, if only speech research was this useful...
Comments (3)
Fun facts!
That is interesting. It would be worth getting rid of the shrill shriek just so I don't feel like spearing my brain when I boil water and the alarm thinks I've set the house afire.
Any time you want to come to the SeaTac area, we'd love to see you! We should be getting down south this summer in the California San Fran general area so we'll get a chance to visit you too.