Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 54, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1899 — Sounds that Are Felt. [ARTICLE]

Sounds that Are Felt.

The deepest note that can possibly be heard by the human ear is produced by an organ pipe 32 feet long. When the air-ripples are in quite regular proportion of 8, 16 and 32 per second the results are perfect musical notes. The thirty-two-foot pipe produces sixteen vibrations per second. When the “Dead March in Saul” is played on a huge cathedral organ this note from the thirty-two-foot pipe is distinctly heard, shaking the building, it would seem, to its very foundations. Were the pipe one inch longer the sound could not be heard. The thunder of Niagara, which is nothing but an organ pipe 167 feet high, produces a note such as 1 would issue from a wooden pipe of 160 feet. This, of course, cannot be heard. But you can feel the beat of the note upon your ear drum. It is at the rate of eight vibrations per second. Even this was surpassed by the sound made when the volcano of Kratokoa blew up. Delicate meteorological instruments the great observatories all over the world registered a sound in which the vibrations were only four per second. So far as is known to mortal ear, at any distance, could he heard this sound.