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from the Lindsay-Wagner-says-she-has-first-dibs dept.
In case you can't get enough news about graphene:
As a species, humans have evolved to have certain strengths and weaknesses. While we don't have the sonar-like range finding capabilities of bats or dolphins, we do have the brains to engineer a device that can give that capability to us.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have done exactly that in their development of tiny ultrasonic microphones made from graphene.
[...] At only one atom in thickness, graphene possesses the key properties of strength, stiffness, and light weight; so it is extremely sensitive to a wide-range of frequencies. In this case, the microphone can pick up frequencies from across the human hearing range—from subsonic (below 20 hertz) to ultrasonic (above 20 kilohertz)—and as high as 500 kHz. (A bat hears in the 9 kHz to 200 kHz range.)
Daredevil, here we come!
(Score: 2) by yarp on Thursday July 09 2015, @10:55AM
Definitely not alone!
When I used to commute I walked past a phone shop from which came a high-pitched sound and I was seemingly the only person in the vicinity who could hear it. I'm not certain but it had the hallmark of a Mosquito alarm [wikipedia.org]. I can hear the 17.4 kHz audio sample in the Wikipedia article and I'm definitely over 25.
I could hear the whine from CRT displays, too, back when they were in common use. My induction hob lets out an ear-splitting drone on its higher power modes and my fiancée thinks I'm nuts when I recoil from it.