• Question: I don't know who to ask this but I'm interested to find out... How does echo location work- or is that not a science question?

    Asked by popcorn32 to Clare, Divya, Ian, Jess, Lewis on 17 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Ian Hands-Portman

      Ian Hands-Portman answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      I’ve been doing this to my eyes, heart and intestines all weekend at the Big Bang Fair!

      Echolocation works by sending out a pulse of sound and listening for some of that sound reflecting back. Since we know when we made the sound pulse and we know the speed of sound we can work out how far away something is by how long the sound takes to bounce back.

      To make a proper picture you send out several pulses in different directions and plot the returning echoes on a screen.

      It still freaked me out watching my own heart beating on screen though!

    • Photo: Lewis Dean

      Lewis Dean answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      I agree with Ian, but I want to add that it definitely is science! The way Ian was using it sounds really cool. Animals like bats also use echolocation to find things like moths to eat; because they fly in the dark, it would be too difficult to use their eyes. So they send out really high pitched signals and use their sensitive ears to build up a ‘picture’ of what is around them

    • Photo: Clare Nevin

      Clare Nevin answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      I’ve just written an answer on my favourite animals – the whales. Beluga whales use echolocation to identify holes in sea ice (they live in the arctic) so they can come up for air. So the sound waves they produce bounce off the ice and return to the belugas as an echo, and when the vibrations changes, they can detect the ice holes.

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