{"id":231,"date":"2012-10-26T12:29:20","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T12:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/?p=231"},"modified":"2012-10-26T12:30:11","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T12:30:11","slug":"halloween-special-the-secret-of-the-moaning-sands-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/2012\/10\/26\/halloween-special-the-secret-of-the-moaning-sands-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"Halloween special &#8211; the secret of the moaning sands revealed."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/files\/2012\/10\/the_desert-wide.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-232\" title=\"the_desert-wide\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/files\/2012\/10\/the_desert-wide-300x187.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"187\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/files\/2012\/10\/the_desert-wide-300x187.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/files\/2012\/10\/the_desert-wide-1024x640.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/files\/2012\/10\/the_desert-wide.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Well it has nothing to do with the oceans or plants but today&#8217;s article from Jane Lee (Science magazine) highlighted new research we find fascinating.\u00a0 She writes: &#8220;When plagued by whipping desert winds, sand dunes signal their displeasure with haunting moans that reverberate across the arid landscape. Some emit single-note songs while others mimic a jumbled chorus\u2014but no one knew why they sang these different songs until now. New research published online this week in <em>Geophysical Research Letters<\/em> finds that <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1029\/2012GL052540\">the size of sand grains shapes a dune&#8217;s song<\/a>. Scientists collected sand from a singing dune in Morocco that moans at around 105 hertz (Hz)\u2014or, to a musician, that&#8217;s G-sharp two octaves below middle C. They compared these notes to sounds from sand collected from a dune in Oman, which produces notes ranging from 90 Hz to 150 Hz (F-sharp to D). By creating mini-dune avalanches in the lab, scientists recreated these desert songs, finding that different layers of sand aren&#8217;t necessary to produce the moans, as previous researchers contended. They also found that when they sieved the Omani sand so that the grains were similarly sized, the resulting &#8220;avalanche&#8221; produced a single-note song. The synchronized movement of sand grains, they conclude, produces the famed moaning, while grain size determines the notes contained in the song.&#8221;\u00a0 See it&#8230;.or rather HEAR it&#8230;.at: <a href=\"http:\/\/news.sciencemag.org\/sciencenow\/2012\/10\/video-shot-for-fri.html\">http:\/\/news.sciencemag.org\/sciencenow\/2012\/10\/video-shot-for-fri.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well it has nothing to do with the oceans or plants but today&#8217;s article from Jane Lee (Science magazine) highlighted new research we find fascinating.\u00a0 She writes: &#8220;When&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1263,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/arnoldt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}