{"id":2421,"date":"2018-04-22T14:29:38","date_gmt":"2018-04-22T14:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redmasque.co.uk\/news\/?p=2421"},"modified":"2018-03-28T14:30:56","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T14:30:56","slug":"the-quiet-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redmasque.co.uk\/news\/the-quiet-room\/","title":{"rendered":"The quiet room"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to booking event entertainment<\/a>, guests normally want something that produces a bit of a sound and has people reacting with one of any number of emotions \u2013 smiling, laughing and being amazed \u2013 but it turns out that in order to be entertained in the US, you might not need any sounds at all. That brings us to this rather curious venue in Minnesota, a room that the Guinness Book of Records\u2019 has dubbed the World\u2019s Quietest Room.<\/p>\n

The so-called \u2018anechoic chamber\u2019 at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis is 99.9% sound absorbing. Created from 3.3-foot-thick fibreglass acoustic wedges and with walls made out of insulated steel that are surrounded by a foot of concrete on every side, you might be forgiven for thinking the space has been envisaged and built from a mad scientist. You\u2019d only be halfway right \u2013 the company behind the room are involved in design, research and testing for various companies with both Whirlpool and Harley Davidson using the anechoic chamber to evaluate sound quality of their products and assess just how loud they may be. NASA have also taken to using the room, with astronauts experiencing a \u2018simulation\u2019 of what they can expect once in space.<\/p>\n

According to the man in charge, Steve Orfield, the record for time spent in the room in one go is only around 45 minutes because anybody inside actually becomes the sound. You\u2019d be able to hear your heart beating, your lungs inhaling and your stomach processing the lunch that you ate earlier that day. Standing up isn\u2019t an option either; humans use sound to help with their orientation and movements, which naturally become impossible when there is no sound to hear at all. As Orfield explains, \u201cIn the anechoic chamber, you don\u2019t have any cues. You take away the perceptual cues that allow you to balance and manoeuvre.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are actually a few anechoic chambers in the UK \u2013 once again used by companies and academic institutions \u2013 but they aren\u2019t generally available to the public and haven\u2019t yet been designated as being \u2018the quietest in the world\u2019. The Faculty of Brain Science at UCL use theirs to study how the brain reacts to a lack of sound, which is probably more interesting and useful than what we would want to do with one\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to booking event entertainment, guests normally want something that produces a bit of a sound and has people reacting with one of any number of emotions \u2013 smiling, laughing and being amazed \u2013 but it turns out … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,336,778],"tags":[476,14,704],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redmasque.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redmasque.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redmasque.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmasque.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmasque.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmasque.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2422,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmasque.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions\/2422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redmasque.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmasque.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmasque.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}