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Hear Here: Listening with Eyes and Ears

Created by the Montshire Museum of Science, Norwich, VT

Examining what we hear and how we listen is the focus of this exhibition on the psychology and physics of hearing and sound. Open-ended exhibit activities will enable visitors to better understand the physical and mathematical principles that govern sound, and explore how we perceive sounds.

Educational Content: After seeing the exhibition, visitors will be able to

• identify high pitches in comparison to low pitches, and loud sounds in comparision to soft sounds
• interpret a visual representation of the pitches of a sound on a display
• explain why it is important for each of us to protect our hearing
• understand that we use cues other than sounds themselves to help us to communicate and to interpret our sound surroundings
• understand that there is a wealth of sounds around us which help us to interpret our surroundings

As much as possible, exhibits are made available to visitors with and without hearing impairments. Many exhibits have "touch vibration pads" which vibrate along with audible sounds, so that sounds can be felt as well as heard; films and computer screens are captioned.

Loud and Louder - A computer exhibit that asks the visitor to choose which sound is louder; sounds get more and more difficult to choose as you go on, and there is a visual display of the sound as well. There is a touch vibration pad.

High Pitch, Low Pitch - A computer exhibit that asks the visitor to choose which sound is higher in pitch; sounds get more and more difficult to choose as you go on, and there is a visual display of the sound as well. There is a touch vibration pad.

Vibration Station - Sweep a pointer knob to listen to pitches from low to high (sine wave). Listen to everyday sounds that are similar in pitch to the sine wave sounds, and make comparisons. There is a touch vibration pad, and a frequency readout that lists the actual frequency on the sweep sine wave.

Seeing your Voice - Make sounds into a microphone and see the sound frequency spectrum on a screen (bar graph by frequency). Includes a touch vibration pad.

Voice Music - Press a Record button, speak a phrase, and then play it back at different pitches on a keyboard. There is a touch vibration pad. Records about 2 seconds of sound with each button push.

Make a Movie Soundtrack - A section of a short film (about 10 minutes) plays over and over. Watch the film and manipulate sound level sliders and buttons to provide background sounds and specific sounds for film action. There is a touch vibration pad, and label sheet with all of the included sounds listed, indicating what exactly the sounds are.

Cricket in the Kitchen - A cat and a cricket are hiding in the kitchen. Find the cat, and then find the cricket in the kitchen cabinets. Then, hide them in a new spot for your friends or the next person. One of the sounds is much easier to locate than the other, because of its frequency.

What's That Sound? Try to identify a sound that may not be familiar to you, by listening to it and by watching its sound spectrum.

Hearing without Understanding - Listen to the speech of a partner (reading from a book of fun poems) while reducing the high frequencies in their voice; without the higher frequencies, it is difficult to understand speech.

What's That you Said? - Watch a film of a speaker played without sound, and choose what you think they are saying from a list of possible phrases. Then, turn on the sound and captions to learn what phrase it was. Phrases are chosen to illustrate the difficulty of relying on lipreading for complete understanding.

Sign Language - Watch a film of an American Sign Language signer signing both ASL and "signed English", and try to match what they are signing to a list of possible phrases. Conform your answer by turning on the captions. Notice that signed English is choppy and slow, and ASL is fluid and graceful, and that how the gestures are signed in ASL changes the meaning of the phrase, much as the way we speak words changes their meaning.

Long Distance Listening - Speak into a long tube and hear the delay by listening to the other end of the tube; compare the delay through a 500 foot long tube to that through a 100 foot tube.

Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow / Hear to Stay / Missing Pitches - Information about why listening to loud sounds can permanently damage your hearing, and a list of typical sounds and how loud they really are. Before-and-after micro-photographs show damage to internal ear haircells by loud sounds. Listen to speech and music through several levels of filters which remove frequencies typically affected by hearing damage caused by loud sounds.