Double Helix is looking for your questions! Our Microscope column answers the most intriguing science, tech, engineering and maths queries you can throw at us.
Comment down below with your question, or email us at Helix.Editor@csiro.au. The best questions will be published in our magazine! Here’s a sample question to get you thinking.
A student visiting our CSIRO Discovery Centre asks: Why do voices sound so different on voice recordings?
The sound of your own voice can be confronting Credit: ©iStock.com/peterschreiber.media
When you speak, the vocal cords in your throat vibrate the air coming out of your lungs. This causes the air to ripple with sound waves as it passes up out your mouth and nose, and out into the air. The size and shape of your chest, position of your tongue – and even the air spaces in your head, called sinuses – all affect the sound of your voice.
Any nearby eardrums (or microphones) will pick up that mix of sound waves in the air, which is heard as your voice.
Your own ears can detect more than just the ripples of sound waves in the air, though. They can also sense the vibrations that pass through your own body – especially those that shake your bones. This adds different characteristics to the sound of your voice that nobody else can hear. It actually makes your voice sound a little deeper inside your own head.
Many people are a little confronted by the slightly squeakier tones of their recorded voice, and even find it uncomfortable. Yet, one experiment from 2013 found people actually liked their own voice more than others’ — when they didn’t know it was their own voice they were hearing!
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