SSS 2009-01-14
时间：2019-01-08 作者：英语课 分类：Scientific American(一)月
This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute.
When we think about how to represent sound visually, most of us probably picture those volume-dependent sine waves. But that’s not how John Stuart Reid pictures sound. He’s patented something called a CymaScope. And he’s using it to help us learn more about how animals like dolphins communicate.
The CymaScope contains a thin film of water—basically a membrane 1. Sound—even at frequencies humans can’t hear—is directed at the water. The water vibrates in response, and a camera records the vibration 2. The end result is a spherical 3 image of sound patterns.
Reid is working with Jack 4 Kassewitz, a dolphin researcher in Florida. Kassewitz has recordings 5 of dolphins in specific situations—for instance, what he knows to be distress 6 calls from a variety of individual animals. Those calls have been imaged by the CymaScope. Kassewitz also plans to have a number of different dolphins echolocate on a ball. He hopes that’ll give us a visual picture of how dolphins recognize a ball.
It might sound far-fetched, but Reid and Kassewitz believe these sound images will provide a library of what we might call dolphin words. Which could one day let us communicate with them with their own vocabulary.
Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber.
- A vibrating membrane in the ear helps to convey sounds to the brain.耳膜的振动帮助声音传送到大脑。
- A plastic membrane serves as selective diffusion barrier.一层塑料薄膜起着选择性渗透屏障的作用。
- There is so much vibration on a ship that one cannot write.船上的震动大得使人无法书写。
- The vibration of the window woke me up.窗子的震动把我惊醒了。
- The Earth is a nearly spherical planet.地球是一个近似球体的行星。
- Many engineers shy away from spherical projection methods.许多工程师对球面投影法有畏难情绪。
- I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
- He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。
- a boxed set of original recordings 一套盒装原声录音带
- old jazz recordings reissued on CD 以激光唱片重新发行的老爵士乐