PDA

View Full Version : The world's quietest room



FBD
05-21-2014, 08:22 PM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2124581/The-worlds-quietest-place-chamber-Orfield-Laboratories.html

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/04/03/article-2124581-1274105D000005DC-638_634x421.jpg

We all crave it, but can you stand the silence? The longest anyone can bear Earth's quietest place is 45 minutes

Orfield Laboratories' 'anechoic chamber' in the U.S is 99.99% sound absorbent
Volunteers see hallucinations after a short while

They say silence is golden – but there’s a room in the U.S that’s so quiet it becomes unbearable after a short time.

The longest that anyone has survived in the ‘anechoic chamber’ at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis is just 45 minutes.

It’s 99.99 per cent sound absorbent and holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s quietest place, but stay there too long and you may start hallucinating.


It achieves its ultra-quietness by virtue of 3.3-foot-thick fiberglass acoustic wedges, double walls of insulated steel and foot-thick concrete.

The company’s founder and president, Steven Orfield, told MailOnline: ‘We challenge people to sit in the chamber in the dark - one reporter stayed in there for 45 minutes.

‘When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You'll hear your heart beating, sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly.

‘In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.’

And this is a very disorientating experience. Mr Orfield explained that it’s so disconcerting that sitting down is a must.

He said: ‘How you orient yourself is through sounds you hear when you walk. In the anechnoic chamber, you don't have any cues. You take away the perceptual cues that allow you to balance and manoeuvre. If you're in there for half an hour, you have to be in a chair.’

The chamber is used by a multitude of manufacturers, which test how loud their products are.

Mr Orfield said: ‘It's used for formal product testing, for research into the sound of different things - heart valves, the sound of the display of a cellphone, the sound of a switch on a car dashboard.’

It’s also put to use to determine sound quality.

Mr Orfield and his team will help companies such as washing-machine maker Whirlpool develop metaphors for what sound should, well, sound like.

Motorbike maker Harley-Davidson used the lab, for instance, to make their bikes quieter, while still sounding like Harley-Davidsons.

‘We record products and people listen to them based on semantic terms, like “expensive”, “low quality”, said Mr Orfield. ‘We measure their feelings and associations.’

Nasa, meanwhile, uses a similar chamber to test its astronauts.

They are put in a water-filled tank inside the room to see ‘how long it takes before hallucinations take place and whether they could work through it’.

As Mr Orfield explains, space is like one giant anechoic chamber, so it’s crucial that astronauts are able to stay focussed.

Mr Orfield admits that he can last a very respectable 30 minutes in his chamber, despite having an off-putting mechanical heart valve that suddenly becomes very loud indeed once he's inside.

Acid Trip
05-21-2014, 10:06 PM
I like hallucinating and I like challenges. Where do I sign up to beat the 45 minute mark?

DemonGeminiX
05-21-2014, 10:16 PM
:rip: AT

Hal-9000
05-21-2014, 10:52 PM
I have constant tinnitus and would breathe loudly through my nose to overcome heartbeats etc...


I could beat 45 minutes with ease

Muddy
05-22-2014, 12:06 AM
Silence is deafening.

DemonGeminiX
05-22-2014, 12:16 AM
Silence is deafening.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RimEGS5XCs

Lambchop
05-22-2014, 12:20 AM
Possible application in torture without leaving a visible mark??

DemonGeminiX
05-22-2014, 12:36 AM
Seriously, this room would probably drive me nuts in record time. I can't sleep unless I have the radio or TV on at a very low volume. I can't concentrate on anything unless I have some kind of external noise in the background to block out.

Godfather
05-22-2014, 03:56 AM
Just me, total silence, and my tinnitus. I'd go insane.

FBD
05-22-2014, 11:38 AM
I would love a room like this of my own, simply for body troubleshooting. That's the amazing thing about a room like this, elimination of all other sound, so body signals get loud! So you have to work and attenuate them until they are quiet enough for your brain to ignore.

I laughed when I read about being able to hear your eyelashes bat in there :lol:

I'm with ya AT, 45 minutes is an easy meditative jaunt, I would have no problem "lasting" 45 in there :lol:

Hal-9000
05-22-2014, 08:29 PM
Seriously, this room would probably drive me nuts in record time. I can't sleep unless I have the radio or TV on at a very low volume. I can't concentrate on anything unless I have some kind of external noise in the background to block out.

I'm the opposite...I can't read when there's any other noise in the room...like, any noise :lol:

same with focusing on a task...if there's too much extraneous noise in the area I'll try to move

Hugh_Janus
05-22-2014, 08:44 PM
45 mins in a dark, quiet room? I'll do it with my eyes closed :hand:

FBD
05-22-2014, 09:05 PM
apparently they dont want to let you stand in there if its dark, you'll fall over, you lose that much sense of equilibrium :lol:

vestibulocochlear cranial nerve = hearing & balance

Loser
05-23-2014, 03:45 AM
Worlds quietest fap...:wank: