Discord: The Story of Noise

We live with unpleasant noise all the time: the humming of our computer, the traffic outside, other people's radios. Indeed, noise management is serious business for some professionals—such as those who design our schools, shopping centers, and public spaces. And even the harshest noise has its positives: dissonance is integral to music; medicine harnesses it to shatter kidney stones; and the military even uses it as a weapon. Mike Goldsmith, a prolific author of popular science books, spent over twenty years in the Acoustics Group at the UK's National Physical Laboratory. In Discord, he reveals how noise levels increased with the development of urban living and with industrialization; explains how our scientific understanding of sound and hearing has developed; and looks at noise in nature, including the remarkable ways in which some animals, such as shrimps, use noise as a weapon or to catch prey. And he looks to the future—the noise sources which are likely to dominate it and the ways in which new science and new ideas may change the way our world will sound.