What do bats, dolphins, shrews and whales have in common? Echolocation! Echolocation is the ability to use sound to navigate. Many animals, and even some humans, are able to use sounds in order to ...

Echolocation is a mechanism that can allow you to navigate the environment by using sound instead of sight. Animals like bats and dolphins are famous for their echolocation skills — however, not many ...

Speakers might all look somewhat similar on the outside, but there are many different kinds and all of them have different jobs. The physics behind what makes a speaker work the way it does can be ...

Many parents think that a newborn will respond to sounds as they get older, but hearing problems often go unnoticed. Early ...

Chris Impey receives funding from the National Science Foundation. Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to ...

Speaking of Zeroes and Ones... Among audiophiles, the analog vs. digital debate rages without end. I, like a lot of other musicians and music fans, have my own preferences--I own many more LPs than ...

It’s a question I’m sure was keeping you up at night: can you make an object spin with a sound wave? The answer, generally speaking, used to be no. Now, though, mechanical engineers have taken a look ...

Sound needs a medium (solid, liquid, or gas) to travel. Space is a vacuum, lacking the matter to carry sound waves. No sound in space means no echoes. While a near-perfect vacuum, some sounds can be ...