Magpie & Whale

Why sand dunes sound so cool. If you’ve ever stood in the valley of a sand dune while the wind picks up, you may have heard a haunting buzz whipping through the desert air. Scientists have been perplexed by the quality of these sounds, but a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters presents a possible answer. The size of the individual grains of sand in a dune could be responsible for shaping these songs. The researchers behind the findings studied sand from Morocco, comparing samples from various dunes, some of which sang a consistent G-sharp (105 Hz) and others which oscillated between F-sharp and D (90 Hz to 150 Hz). The form of the sand grains was found to be the operative variable in why they sounded different. [ScienceNow]