If it quacks like a duck...it is in an echo-chamber!

Just in case you have, as a child, heard the myth that ducks' quack does not produce an echo, and have never outgrew the myth (possibly by never even thinking about it ever since), a potential IgNobel winner for next year has been published and, yes, ducks' quacks produce echoes. Shelley has the details of the experiments and the link to the sound-file of the quack and the echo. Ah, the power of the scientific method! Though alternative methods have been proposed:

i-147bc2f0b9aee299a4c7aad94b8d4a41-duck echo.gif

Now, the question remains: which echo-chamber does the duck prefer: its Left Wing or its Right Wing?

More like this

Usually Deepak Chopra's nonsensical writings at the Huffington post about mind-body healing are so vague and bland I don't bother addressing them. The mind controls the body, the mind is powerful, blah blah blah, who cares right? Well, today Chopra pulled back the curtain and we see the crank…
Readers who are regulars at Effect Measure or Deltoid will be familiar with the opinions of attorney and author Michael Fumento. Fumento considers himself an avian flu "skeptic," and recently issued a "challenge" (the title, "My avian flu challenge to the leftist bird-brained squawkers", might…
[This is a very long post, a reply to Orac's (my respected SciBling at Respectful Insolence) equally long response to my also long original post that invited him to tell us what he thought separated his brand of medicine from the "alties" he frequently posts about. Probably most of you won't have…
So, Linus Pauling is apparently the hot topic of the day. Janet's already discussed a bit about the whole "wacky older scientist" phenomenon over at Adventures in Ethics and Science, while the first post cited gives you a bit of the background of Linus Pauling, bringing in two new studies on the…

Oh yeah, I saw that myth on Mythbusters. If Im remembering it right, the reason it was so hard to hear the echo was because it sounded the same as the quack itself.

The episode that brought us the immortal Jamie quote "quack, damn you."