C is for Clouds

Clouds are more than just water. Some are sound.

There is a common understanding about what sound is and how we can hear it. Sound is created by an infinite number of ways. Car horn, hot chocolate slurp, laughter and the horrible shrill of the recorder instrument to name a few. We can hear sound due to vibrations.

Let me explain this better.

Imagine a little man. In the man’s hand is his trumpet. When the little man brings the trumpet to his mouth and blows, vibrations are created. These vibrations can travel through air, liquid and rock. The harder the little man blows through his trumpet, the further the vibrations travel along a sound wave. When that sound wave reaches an ear, the vibrations dance about in our ear and we hear the trumpet’s toot.

There is a little known scientific difference between “organic” and “inorganic” sound. Organic sound is created by anything with a heartbeat. Inorganic sound is created by everything else. So just to clarify:

ORGANIC

Laughter, barking, high five slap, yelling, singing, clapping

INORGANIC

Piano keys, boot foot steps, avalanches, waves crashing

Both organic and inorganic sound behaves with vibrations and sound waves. However organic sound also produces vapour.

The vapour is the body of the sound if you will.

It is created simultaneously as the vibrations but behaves very differently. Instead of moving along sound waves, the vapour rises high into the sky. There it joins up with other little puffs of sound vapour. Eventually so much collects that a cloud is created and this is the first time that the vapour is actually visible.

It looks like any other cloud – except they’re shaped like bunny rabbits.

When the bunny cloud is big and heavy enough, it rains down all the sound back to the ground. In big storms, heavy thunder rattles houses and howling winds fly through alleyways and streets like an army of baritones and tenors.

When a sound drop touches an animal, person or anything else with a heartbeat, the sound is absorbed back into that organism. If it touches something else first, such as a building or the ground, then its potency is heavily degraded. For example, whales are actually very chatty mammals. However it is very rare for a whale to touch a sound drop before it has hit the ocean. More often than not the sound drop will float about for quite some time before a whale swings it’s huge body along and reloads its song. Truth be told, if whales did get pure sound drops, they’d be very articulate orators. As it is currently, the best they can do is hum and mumble about the place.

They seem to understand each other well enough though so I guess it’s not all so bad for the old whale.