Phil TK
Contributor
Pay attention at the back there, this is a weird idea and you have to bear with me.
Earlier this year a dive buddy and I discovered by accident that we could shout at each other underwater. Now of course loads of people have done this, at best it's exhausting and silly and not worth it and at worst it's a good way of laughing uncontrollably and swallowing water. We were taking a breath, then removing the reg and speaking normally but 'loudly'. This only worked up to a point but you could make out some words -especially one particular expletive, which by some strange aqua-phonetic property can be heard perfectly.
Ahem, anyway...we talked about this revelation one evening months ago and some ideas were thrown around regarding its development. I shall share one idea with you all, since it was a shame that we never went on to try it out -but it might work. Somebody out there might be able to cast some opinion on the science.
Ok, here goes. We figured that obviously you can't make out speech underwater properly because the INITIAL sound carrier (air ) is distorted as it forms bubbles the moment it leaves your mouth. This means that when the sound wave transfers to the water medium they are distorted -so you here distorted sound. We thought that what is needed is something that alows you to talk into a stable air medium that could transfer the sound wave to the water. Somebody came up with this idea.
Consider a simple empty megaphone shape with a mouthpiece at the small end that embraces your mouth area, inside the megaphone halfway along is a round blanking plate of (say) thin metal that divides the megaphone into two chambers. The smaller chamber nearest your mouth has 'exhuast holes at the bottom below the mouthpiece 'height' (in relation to the centreline).
All you do in theory is blow one breath into the small chamber via the mouthpiece to fill it with air. Take another breath from your reg and then just speak into it.
And that's it. Would it work?
I hope nobody tries this in a diving situation -if you must have a go, try it in the pool first!!
Oh, and happy new year all.
Phil TK
Earlier this year a dive buddy and I discovered by accident that we could shout at each other underwater. Now of course loads of people have done this, at best it's exhausting and silly and not worth it and at worst it's a good way of laughing uncontrollably and swallowing water. We were taking a breath, then removing the reg and speaking normally but 'loudly'. This only worked up to a point but you could make out some words -especially one particular expletive, which by some strange aqua-phonetic property can be heard perfectly.
Ahem, anyway...we talked about this revelation one evening months ago and some ideas were thrown around regarding its development. I shall share one idea with you all, since it was a shame that we never went on to try it out -but it might work. Somebody out there might be able to cast some opinion on the science.
Ok, here goes. We figured that obviously you can't make out speech underwater properly because the INITIAL sound carrier (air ) is distorted as it forms bubbles the moment it leaves your mouth. This means that when the sound wave transfers to the water medium they are distorted -so you here distorted sound. We thought that what is needed is something that alows you to talk into a stable air medium that could transfer the sound wave to the water. Somebody came up with this idea.
Consider a simple empty megaphone shape with a mouthpiece at the small end that embraces your mouth area, inside the megaphone halfway along is a round blanking plate of (say) thin metal that divides the megaphone into two chambers. The smaller chamber nearest your mouth has 'exhuast holes at the bottom below the mouthpiece 'height' (in relation to the centreline).
All you do in theory is blow one breath into the small chamber via the mouthpiece to fill it with air. Take another breath from your reg and then just speak into it.
And that's it. Would it work?
I hope nobody tries this in a diving situation -if you must have a go, try it in the pool first!!
Oh, and happy new year all.
Phil TK
