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.
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
Sound mirror orchestra in Belgium
According to Andreas Angelidakis‘s website, Artes Musicales is an exhibition on the relationship of contemporary art and classical music
. It is curated by Christophe de Jaeger and Joost Fonteyne, and opened at Alden Biesen castle in Belgium in July and runs to August 30.
Based on Sound Mirrors, the WWII ancient bunker-like radars, we proposed a set of musical buildings for the park surrounding the castle.
These structures, arranged in the park like instruments in an orchestra, would catch the sounds of the trees an maybe people having fun around them, and who knows what it would sound like.
I can’t quite tell from the website whether they have actually been built or not – the pictures just show models, so I guess not.
Denge mirrors seem from above
As a result of visiting Camber castle on 4 July 2009, I stumbled across RXwildlife Sightings, the weblog with the latest wildlife sightings for the Hastings, Rye Bay, Dungeness and Romney Marsh area
.
On the website is an aerial photograph from 1946 showing (if you look carefully!) the Denge sound mirrors from above. There is also a modern view for comparison, showing how the area has been developed.
This photo shows the Lade, the north eastern part of the Dungeness shingle beach in 1946. This section of the beach is relatively young with a series of beach ridges terminating in the marsh soils to the west of the shingle. The dark line bending round from the top left and cutting south across the shingle is the old railway line, with little development to the west of this feature other than the listening mirrors, which were reached by tracks from the east coast. These structures were a pre-radar attempt to focus the noise of aircraft crossing the channel for its operators, and in those days they have a relatively clear view of the sea with only scattered housing along the coast. the most extensive buildings are the beginnings of the Romney Sands holiday camp.
A series of “then and now” photos show how the coast line has changed over time.
Sound mirror open day 19 July 2009
Just a reminder about this weekend’s open day at the Denge sound mirrors, organised by the Romney Marsh Countryside Project:
Due to the overwhelming popularity of last years Echoes of the Sky tours we are making a few changes this year. We will be holding a new open day on Sunday 19th July. The island will be open from 10am in the morning until 5pm. Dr Richard Scarth, an expert on these structures, will be present to answer any questions. The Sound Mirrors are located on private land and this is the only way in which they can be accessed. We will have a number of staff stationed at key places to help direct people to the island. There will a member of staff on the bridge asking for a £2 donation per person to cover costs. Parking is available at Lade car park, opposite Taylor Road on Coast Drive (halfway between the Pilot Pub and Romney Sands) (TR 085 208). This will be a non-booking event, you just need to turn up on the day. The walk will be across shingle. For anymore details contact the Romney Marsh Countryside Project
Sound mirrors on Greatstone website
Greatstone.net has comprehensive information on the village of Greatstone, the home to Sound Mirrors, […] large concrete structures built in the 1920s and 1930s to detect enemy aircraft.
The history section of the website has details of the Denge mirrors, and also the railways and a US bomber which crashed nearby.
The Geek Atlas
The Geek Atlas is a new book by John Graham-Cumming published by O’Reilly, the people who do those techie books with animals on the covers (and as a result made me want to slash and burn any East Indies jungles where tarsiers might live).
The reason for mentioning the book here is that one of the sites listed is Denge, for the three sound mirrors.
The history of science is all around us, if you know where to look. With this unique traveler’s guide, you’ll learn about 128 destinations around the world where discoveries in science, mathematics, or technology occurred or is happening now. Travel to Munich to see the world’s largest science museum, watch Foucault’s pendulum swinging in Paris, ponder a descendant of Newton’s apple tree at Trinity College, Cambridge, and more.
Each site in The Geek Atlas focuses on discoveries or inventions, and includes information about the people and the science behind them. Full of interesting photos and illustrations, the book is organized geographically by country (by state within the U.S.), complete with latitudes and longitudes for GPS devices.
Destinations include:
Bletchley Park in the UK, where the Enigma code was broken
The Alan Turing Memorial in Manchester, England
The Horn Antenna in New Jersey, where the Big Bang theory was confirmed
The National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Maryland
The Trinity Test Site in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was exploded
The Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, CaliforniaYou won’t find tedious, third-rate museums, or a tacky plaque stuck to a wall stating that “Professor X slept here.” Every site in this book has real scientific, mathematical, or technological interest — places guaranteed to make every geek’s heart pound a little faster. Plan a trip with The Geek Atlas and make your own discoveries along the way.
The Geek Atlas. ISBN: 9780596523206, 542 pages, £22.99