Douglas Butler illustrates how to create an Autograph file to test the parabolicality of a sound mirror, at the Association of Teachers of Mathematics website.
Month: August 2009
Boffins in Britain
Alec Muffett at Dropsafe on sound mirrors.
Britain is a hothouse of brains and creativity, doubly-so for having to make-do-and-mend from underinvesment and underappreciation, and this leads to startling solutions that fuel incredible innovation – even if most of those subsequently flop for lack of business nous.
Occasionally, these innovations leave footprints in the sand. Bletchley Park is onesuch. Another of which I have long known a little, but never known a lot, are the sound mirrors.
Music from the weather through sound mirrors
Inspired by sound mirrors, someone suggests musicalizing a weather system through landscape architecture.
BLDGBLOG here proposes a series of sound mirrors to be built in a landscape with regular, annual wind phenomena. A distant gully, moaning at 2am every second week in October, every year, due to northern winds from Canada, has its low, droning, cliff-created reverb carefully echoed back up a chain of sound mirrors to supply natural soundscapes for the sleeping residents of nearby towns.
Or a crevasse that actually makes no sound at all has a sound mirror built nearby, which then amplifies and redirects the ambient air movements, coaxing out a tone – but only for the first week of March. Annually.
Aerial view of Denge sound mirrors
An aerial photograph of the sound mirrors at Denge. Just how close these structures were to disappearing into the flooded mineral extraction workings can be clearly seen
.
Panoramic photos of Denge sound mirrors
Geoff Mather has made some wonderful panoramic photos of the three Denge acoustic mirrors, as well as lots of other panoramic pictures.
Sound Mirror Denge 200 Foot in England