Those attending the American Physical Society (APS) March meeting at the Minneapolis Convention Center next week will no doubt be looking forward to the many physics talks on offer. This year’s APS March meeting also celebrates the 125th anniversary of the APS and physicists can mark the occasion by belting out a few tunes at the meeting’s annual physics sing-along.
Organized by physicist Walter Smith from Haverford College, this year’s get together will be held on 6 March at the Hyatt Regency Hotel from 9:00 – 10:30 p.m. It will feature songs such as “Problem Set”, set to “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell, “You Got Me Lasing”, set to “You Drive Me Crazy” by Britney Spears and “Complex Z”, set to “Let It Be” by the Beatles. If that has not whetted your appetite, then the free beer provided might. At least the attendance of PhD students is guaranteed.
Staying in the realm of acoustics, an international team of researchers has reported that a tiny fish is capable of creating a sound that is comparable to a jet aircraft taking off 100 m distant. Called Danionella cerebrum, the creature is a little over a centimetre long yet can create sounds at levels greater than 140 dB.
Drumming cartilage
Ralf Britz at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Germany and colleagues used high-speed video, micro-computed tomography, gene expression analysis, and finite difference methods to show that males of the species have a unique sound-generating apparatus. This comprises drumming cartilage; a specialized rib; and a fatigue-resistant muscle.
“This apparatus accelerates the drumming cartilage with a force of over 2000 g and shoots it against the swim bladder to produce a rapid, loud pulse”, explains Britz. “These pulses are strung together to produce calls with either bilaterally alternating or unilateral muscle contractions,” he adds.
The fish live in shallow and turbid waters in Myanmar, and the researchers believe that the males use their loud calls to attract female fish in the murky water. “We assume that the competition between the males in this visually restrictive environment contributed to the development of the special mechanism for acoustic communication,” says Britz.
The team also found that during the sound-production process, parts of the fish’s skeleton moved much faster than expected – challenging current notion of how motion occurs in vertebrates.
Much of this research was possible because the fish is nearly transparent, allowing the team to observe the sound making apparatus in action.
The research is described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
- SEO Powered Content & PR Distribution. Get Amplified Today.
- PlatoData.Network Vertical Generative Ai. Empower Yourself. Access Here.
- PlatoAiStream. Web3 Intelligence. Knowledge Amplified. Access Here.
- PlatoESG. Carbon, CleanTech, Energy, Environment, Solar, Waste Management. Access Here.
- PlatoHealth. Biotech and Clinical Trials Intelligence. Access Here.
- Source: https://physicsworld.com/a/physics-sing-along-is-coming-to-minneapolis-tiny-fish-creates-very-loud-sounds/
