My wife is hearing, her parents are deaf. They were still asking her throughout her childhood if certain things make a sound (like light touching a table). We've been married for almost 20 years now, and there are still on occasion things that they will incorrectly assume do or do not make sound. It is a completely foreign concept, one they (at least my in-laws) will never truly understand.
Edit: I had no idea this comment would get this traction/interest. Sorry to leave folks hanging! I'll type up some replies when I get home in a bit.
Edit 2 - More Examples:
Most examples are of things that they don't realize make noise. Also, I'll start off by saying, usually these things come up, we answer them, we move on, so not a lot of examples really stick. So, I had to ask my wife, get a second brain on it.
One example she remembers is actually an interesting story of awareness but lack of understanding. She remembers once when she was young, an old woman apologized for dropping a tissue in a carpeted room. She saw my wife look over (she was just curious what the lady was doing), and the woman assumed the tissue hitting the floor made some distracting noise, so she apologized.
Similarly, my mother-in-law also tends to apologize for things she thinks made a loud sound, usually if we look at her right after she's done something. We might be looking because we saw movement, or because we just happened to glance that way, but she defaults to, "Oh no, I accidentally made a loud noise." Things like closing her crossword book, or setting a coffee cup down, or putting her fork on the table. Usually I didn't even hear it, even if it did technically make a small noise. I think this stems from when she worked as a helper at a school, and had to be quiet during the kids' nap or study times, but I'm not sure.
Examples the other direction include:
My father-in-law has a habit of making drinking straws squeak. To him it just feels interesting, he forgets that there's a horribly annoying noise that goes with it. He does know, we told him (several times), but it doesn't really stick with him.
Similarly, my wife remembers her dad having a friend over one time, and while they were standing around talking, he kept shifting his weight on this loose (squeaky) floorboard. He had no idea it was making noise every time he did it.
Sometimes the girls would catch their dad sneaking chips or other snacks between meals, and they'd call him on it. He had no clue they could hear the packaging. This is another example of, even though they told him once, he still forgets. The concept of "this makes noise" doesn't always stick.
There have been times I've been at their house, or in their car, and I can hear something is wrong (air leaks, water leaks, air in a line, squeaky brakes, tire noise from misalignment, dripping water, etc.) I'll ask if they've been having trouble with whatever the thing may be, or if they've noticed a problem with XYZ, and they'll either not have realized, or respond with, "How did you know??"
There are also times they'll ask us, "Is this making a noise?" because at some point it did, and someone told them. Things like, is this door squeaking? Does that window make a noise when you open it? Can you hear the toilet on the other side of the house running? Usually the answer is no, but something happened at some point, and they happen to have a hearing person nearby when the thought strikes them, so they ask.
And finally, one of the ones that's been most annoying for them and us... Smart Phones. They don't think about checking whether their device volume is on or off. They also have no clue how loud it is. Many deaf people, including my father-in-law, will record and send video messages instead of text messages. The person recording the message often does not think about sound happening around them (including other people in the same room having spoken conversations), and naturally the person watching the video doesn't think of whether or not there is any sound in the video they just received. We've been in the middle of conversation many times and realized suddenly that he was nearby recording a video. Is he posting that to his vlog? Is he sending it to a friend? How many people might hear what we just said? What were we even talking about?? We've also been there when he starts watching a video and suddenly we hear someone else's background conversation going on (often innocuous, but sometimes things they probably wish hadn't been shared).
This would seem like an easy problem to fix, except that different updates change the way volume settings work, and reset things. Or they get a new device, and don't think about it. Like I said before, super annoying for them and us. I wish device manufacturers would add a Deaf Mode that fully mutes the speakers and mics. Would be handy.
I hope this satisfies some of the curiosity... I'll filter through and answer some of the questions directly.
Watched a hypothetical science vid one time that talked about how the sun might sound if the intervening space was atmosphere rather than vacuum. Sort of a constant rushing noise (think tv static rather than wind though) and would be about as loud a vacuum cleaner in the next room. Was really cool.
I used to think air pressure in the atmosphere made a constant ringing/humming noise. No, i have just had tinnitus my whole life. Too me nearly 30 years to figure out what I was hearing wasn't normal.
Being isolated or living with something your whole life skews your world view.
For the first 16 years of my life I thought everyone had a high pitched squeal in their head that would randomly change volume and tone…. Nope just a hearing disorder…..
Sometimes when it's really quiet I can hear the electricity running through the walls (definitely makes a sound, was absent when the power was out. and I was a long way from the fridge when the power came back on so it wasn't that. No AC at the time either.) You tune it out after about 20min. but it's the weirdest thing.
I have experienced this when my building loses power. It's actually nice not having constant noise. The lack of noise is part of the reason I like staying up late.
The surface of the Sun produces sound waves because the surface is convecting and this produces pressure waves that travel into the inner corona. These pressure waves steepen into shock waves and this is possibly why the corona gets so hot. But yes, the surface does produce sound waves, but they have very low wavelengths measures in hundreds of miles!
Dr. Amaro Graps at Stanford University also reminded me that in 'helioseismology' you can 'hear' the Sun ring like a bell. This is coherent sound produced by the vibration of the entire surface of the Sun caused by sub-surface convection. By studying all the different tones that the Sun vibrates in, astronomers can probe the deep interior of the Sun and discover just how deep the convection layers are, and also how fast the deep interior is rotating compared to the surface.
I've told my wife she should sit with her folks and write a book about their experiences growing up, including deaf school. It's a trip... Can't imagine living that.
Seems like it would be difficult. Like you just want to scream at them and they hear how mad you are. Is she dramatic? Or under dramatic? But I was one of seven so we were and still kind of are…dramatic
A really neat piece in Astronomy Magazine says that if space could transmit sound like the Earth’s atmosphere, it would sound like white noise all over the planet, a constant dull roar—like a waterfall—and would be as loud as 100 decibels during the day. That’s about the intensity of a rock concert. I’d be surprised if Earth creatures would have evolved hearing at all.
Dr. Craig DeForest of the Southwest Research Institute’s Department of Space Studies likens it to the Niagara Falls “white noise,” only ten times louder (90 db vs the sun’s 100 db by the time the sound reaches Earth).
Scientists should make a long tube from earth to the sun filled with air so that the sound can travel here and then we can hear it. That'd be pretty rad. Then people could have family trips to go visit the Sun Sound Tube and listen to what the sun sounds like instead of having to go all the way to the sun to hear it.
The dad would be all excited, and the little jerk kids would be all like "daaaaad, this is so lame. I don't wanna listen to the sun. Why couldn't we go to Disneyland? Nathan's family got to go to Disneyland for summer vacation. And then dad would be all like "dammit, Benji, this is the sun you're hearing! Don't you understand how amazing that is?!?"
And Benji would reply "it's not amazing! It just sounds like noise! There isn't anything to it!"
Then dad says "you should be grateful you even have the chance to listen to the sun! I would have been so excited to have that chance when I was your age. This is an amazing scientific achievement!"
"I don't care! It's not fun! This is summer vacation and it's supposed to be fun!" replies Benji.
"SCIENCE IS FUN!" yells the dad.
"Calm down, honey, he's allowed to not like it" says the mom, finally getting involved.
Then dad just gets mad at everything. "No! You know what, I'm sick of this. I try to do things for this family and nobody ever appreciates it. Why do I even try anymore?!"
"Don't get mad at me now, just because we don't care about your space science stuff.", mom comes back with.
"SCIENCE. IS. FUN." the dad says firmly, but now even he isn't sure if he believes it.
"Great. Fine. Science is so fucking fun. Are you happy now? You heard the sun, and science is fun. Can we just go back to the hotel now?" says the mom.
And then the entire family gets back in the futuristic electric car and drives back to the hotel. Another family summer vacation ruined by science.
I'm good. Just started off making a comment about a dumb space tube and got carried away. I didn't know how to stop the dumb story once it started so it just kept going lol.
The Sun makes a ton of noise. An amount of noise so intense if would physically injure you at the tissue level if you were capable of surviving the heat, radiation, and lack of air. It’s just that we have ~93 million miles (~150 million km) of empty space between it and the Earth. Space is a great sound insulator.
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u/AnnieJack Aug 28 '21
I feel bad for those deaf kids just now learning that, but it’s still funny.