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Sometimes,
one just needs a bit of peace and quiet. Not for serenity (well, that
too), but for scientific research. If you want to measure how loud a
consumer product is — say, that of a cell phone’s ring or the hum of a
dishwasher — you are better off doing so in an environment with little to
no ambient noise. So many organizations — Apple, Microsoft, and the U.S.
military to name a few — have built special rooms, called anechoic
(read as “an-echoic,” as in “echo free”) chambers, to create such
conditions.
Minneapolis,
Minnesota-based Orfield Laboratories has one, too. And they rent it out
so that others can test their products, much like Apple and others do in
their own chambers. But Orfield does something additional: they let
visitors sit in the room, alone and in the dark, to see how long they can
last without going mad.
According to Minnesota Public Radio, the
typical quiet room — such as your bedroom late at night — has an ambient
noise level of about 30 decibels, caused by the rustling of sheets, the
hum of the air conditioner, and similar sources of white noise. Orfield’s
anechoic chamber has a noise level of -9 decibels — yes, negative nine.
According to Guinness World Records, it is the world’s quietest room. The
silence-producing design, according to the Deccan Chronicle and
seen above, features a “trampoline”-like mesh floor, which prevents
sounds from reflecting off of it; and walls with one meter-long pieces of
soundproofing protruding outward, which absorb sound.
A trip inside may
seem like a get-away from the tribulations of the rest of the world, but
as Orfield Laboratories President Steve Orfield notes, nothing could be further
from the truth. He explained why to Minnesota Public Radio: “When you sit
in any rooms a person normally sits in, you hear the sound and all its
reflections. When you go into an anechoic chamber, there are zero
reflections. So if you listen to me talk and hear my voice, you’re
hearing my voice exactly. And if I turn around and talk, the only thing
you’ll hear is the sound bending around my head.” The body adapts to the
massive sensory deprivation by finding whatever it can latch onto — even
its own noises. Quite literally, the mind starts focusing on the sounds
of one’s own heart beating and lungs expanding. It is enough to drive
almost all people to hallucinate.
Orfield himself
can only last about 30 minutes in the room before listening to his body parts
(including, and especially, an artificial heart valve); it’s more than he
can handle. But perhaps the word “only” there is improperly used. As reported by the Daily Mail, to be longest
anyone has lasted is 45 minutes.  Bonus
fact: Want to make someone feel
terrible? Say nothing for four seconds. According to researchers in Holland (per TIME), that’s how long it takes for the
listener’s brain to take your silence as a rejection of his or her last
statement.
From the Archives: Small, Hot, and Loud: It’s small enough to fit in
your hand, and can make noises which are louder than a sonic boom.
Several nights ago I reread the title story in William Maxwell’s Over By the River (1977), a loose, largely plotless account of a young couple living in Manhattan with their two daughters. One of the minor pleasures of good fiction is the incidental detail, included by the writer not to make an editorial point or even to reveal character but simply as an acknowledgement of life’s bountiful randomness. John Cheever does this often, as does Tolstoy. Sometimes all I remember of a story after many years is one of these precious, insignificant details.
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