Discord The Story of Noise

by Goldsmith, Mike

• ISBN13: 9780199600687
• ISBN10: 0199600686
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-10-12
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

We live with unpleasant noise all the time: the humming of our computer, the traffic outside, other people's radios. Indeed, noise management is serious business for some professionals--such as those who design our schools, shopping centers, and public spaces. And even the harshest noise has its positives: dissonance is integral to music; medicine harnesses it to shatter kidney stones; and the military even uses it as a weapon. Mike Goldsmith, a prolific author of popular science books, spent over twenty years in the Acoustics Group at the UK's National Physical Laboratory. InDiscord, he reveals how noise levels increased with the development of urban living and with industrialization; explains how our scientific understanding of sound and hearing has developed; and looks at noise in nature, including the remarkable ways in which some animals, such as shrimps, use noise as a weapon or to catch prey. And he looks to the future--the noise sources which are likely to dominate it and the ways in which new science and new ideas may change the way our world will sound.

Author Biography

Mike Goldsmith is the former Head of the Acoustic Group at the United Kingdom's National Physical Laboratory and an author of many books for general readers. Two of his books have been short-listed for the Aventis prize (now the Royal Society prize) for science books.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. xi
Abbreviations	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
The Nature of Noise	p. 5
A Silent Bang	p. 13
Classical Noise	p. 27
New Noise	p. 42
A New Science of Sound	p. 52
Noise in the Eighteenth Century	p. 69
Machineries of Noise	p. 83
The First Champions of Silence	p. 111
The Noise Century	p. 135
Noise in Wartime	p. 151
A Time of Peace?	p. 158
A Different Kind of War	p. 181
A New Beginning?	p. 188
The Power of Science	p. 196
A New Pollution	p. 222
Noise Now	p. 237
A Quieter Tomorrow?	p. 268
Notes	p. 281
Index	p. 303
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.