On the ducks echo thing:
One view:
Claim: A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
Status: True, but only in caves.
The myth:
A duck's quack certainly does echo around in a reverberation chamber, so a duck's quack does echo, which leads to the most interesting question. Why did the myth arise? There are a few possible explanations that I can think of:
- The quack does echo, but it is usually too quiet to hear. When you want to hear an echo, you usually make a very loud noise to make sure the reflection can be heard. But a duck quacks too quietly, so the reflection is too quiet to hear.
- Ducks don't quack near reflecting surfaces. You need a large reflecting surface, a mountain or building for the sound to reflect off. Maybe ducks don't hang around reflecting surfaces.
- It is hard to hear the echo of a sound which fades in and fades out.
- As with many myths it's hard to say how or why they got started but this myth has been "busted" in several scientific experiments.
Another view:
Mine certainly do - however, they are CALL DUCKS. I don't know if that makes a difference.
Another view:
A team at Sanford University recently did some research to get to the bottom of the problem with the help of willing volunteer, Daisy the duck. They found that a duck's quack does echo, but it is quite hard to hear the echo because of the quality of the quack sound. A sound that fades in and out (like a duck quack) makes an echo which can become mixed up with the original sound being made. This means it is hard to distinguish one from the other.
The other reason the myth may have arisen is because you don't often find ducks hanging around places where you commonly get echoes, like cliffs on a beach, or large cathedrals!
Actually, I chased a duck into a cave once, and I was laughing like hell. My laughing was echoing ALOT but the duck was quacking louder and it wasn't echoing at all. Maybe there is something about a duck's echo in CAVE that is different to a duck's quack elswhere.But I'm just saying that it didn't echo in the cave.
