Thursday, October 25, 2012

Music in the Desert



I recently came across this article here.

In a few places on Earth, sand "sings" as it falls down dunes, making a low droning sound that lies within the bottom half of a cello's musical range.
   
For centuries the eerie humming in deserts mesmerized visitors such as explorer Marco Polo and scientist Charles Darwin, who couldn't explain the origin of the sound.

Scientists suspected they were hearing vibrations in the subsurface layers of the dunes. In 2009, however, University of France researchers found that the sound is created by vibrations of the sand grains that avalanche down the dunes.
In a new study to be published Friday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, those French scientists tackle another mystery: How can singing sands create multiple notes at the same time?

To answer that question, the scientists studied sound produced at two different dunes: one in the Sahara in southwestern Morocco, and one near Al-Askharah, a coastal town in southeastern Oman, on the Arabian Peninsula. [Hear the singing sand dunes.]

In Morocco, the sands consistently produced a note at 105 Hertz, in the neighborhood of the G-sharp two octaves below middle C, according to a release describing the study.
The Omani sands also sang, but sometimes belted out a cacophony of almost every possible frequency from 90 to 150 hertz, or about F-sharp to D, a range of nine notes.

One difference between the dunes stuck out: While the Moroccan grains were of a relatively uniform size, the Omani sand grains were all over the place. Researchers then isolated grains of different sizes and recorded the sound they made moving through the air in a laboratory setting.

They concluded the notes produced by the sands depend upon the size of the grains and the speed at which they whistle through the air.

But scientists still don't understand how the erratic motion of flowing grains translates into sounds coherent enough to resemble musical notes, according to a release on the research.

Their hypothesis is that the vibrations of flowing sand grains synchronize, or vibrate at the same frequency, leading the mass of sand grains to vibrate in unison. These thousands of small vibrations combine to push the air together, like the diaphragm of a loudspeaker.

"But why do they synchronize with each other?" study author Simon Dagois-Bohy said in a statement. "That's still not resolved."

As I love both music and science I thought this was very interesting.

picture taken from Time magazine.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

My First Blog Award!

My sister followingmatthew516.com has awarded me for a Libster blog award!

As I personally have never heard of this until just, now she has given me permission to copy her post.

The word Liebster is German for "beloved" or "favorite" or something similar. I'm not exactly sure how the tag started, but the general consensus for the reason behind it seems to be summed up in this quote, "The award recognizes new and upcoming bloggers with less than 200 followers who deserve some kind of recognition and support for their contribution." So there you have it.


But it comes at a price. There are rules to be followed, which seem to vary depending on which path the award has taken across the internet... But basically, like any other tag, these are the basic rules which help to keep the award going:

1) Choose up to 11 bloggers, linking them to your post.
2) Go to their webpage and inform them of their nomination.
3) Absolutely NO tagbacks.
4) Remember to ONLY tag bloggers with less than 200 followers.

~~~
so here are the blogs I have chosen to nominate

~ Learning to be a Women
~ the Lady's Resource  (I have gotten some wonderful vintage fashion ideas from here!)

Monday, January 30, 2012

Update on our farm

As it has been a while since my last post I thought I would give some updates.

Two of our ewes had their lambs.
                                                     These three where born first

                                                     then this one was born a few days latter.

      We now have a 3 day old calf but, I don't have a photo of him yet .
    
We have three "new" horses one is a Belgian/paint mix, the other two are Morgan mixes.

That's all that's new, until next time...