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  Outreach: Sound in the Sea - Saturday Academy
 

Saturday Academy

"Sound in the Sea" is a hands-on experience with NOAA/OSU scientists

  image of 2002 Students listening to hydrophone at the HMSC pier in Yaquina Bay, Newport.
2002 Students listening to hydrophone at the HMSC pier in Yaquina Bay, Newport.

Course Title: Sound in the Sea
Dates: 5/3 and 5/10, 2003, 10am-2:30pm
Course Description: Outline
Maximum number of students: 10
Grades: 8th grade and up
Fee: $25 (includes the cost of hydrophone)
Registration: http://oregonstate.edu/precollege/academy/registration.htm
Instructors: NOAA/OSU Scientists
Location: PMEL NOAA building, Hatfield Marine Science Center, Newport, OR
Map: http://www.hmsc.orst.edu/info/maps/hmscmap.gif
e-mail: Haru Matsumoto or Sharon Nieukirk

image of student making hydrophone
image of egg hydrophone
Students making the 'egg
hydrophone'.

 

Introduction

You use sound to talk, listen, and enjoy music. In air, you do these effortlessly, relying on sound for your daily activities. But in the ocean it's a different story: Even when you're snorkeling, the ocean is a rather quiet and monotonous place, other than the occasional passing motor boat.

Did you know that the ocean is actually full of "colorful" sounds? If your ears could tune in to really low-pitched sound, you would realize that the ocean is full of sounds. What's out there? Sounds made by many species of marine mammals, as well as underwater earthquakes happening many miles away. You can hear these sounds using only an underwater microphone, also known as a hydrophone. By playing back sounds recorded underwater and analyzing them on a computer, you can discover how to locate earthquakes and how to identify different species of whales. You will learn that the ocean is full of sounds, from roaring earthquakes of the mid-Atlantic Ridge to the calls of migrating blue whales in the south Pacific.

In the "Sound in the Sea" class, scientists at NOAA introduce you to the concepts of sound waves, frequency, and the spectrogram. Engineers will teach you a brief history of SONAR, the idea of the piezo-electric effect that underlies the design of hydrophones, and a quick Electronics 101. Then you will learn how to make a simple hydrophone. Using rubber glue and a plastic eggshell, you'll make your own hydrophone. In the second week, you'll test your hydrophones at the OSU pier. Listening to the hand-made hydrophone is fun, but the computer software we will show you makes sound recording and analysis much easier. So if you have a laptop, do bring it with you. We will help you to install a sound analysis program that OSU scientists have developed.


 
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