Funmurphys: the Blog

Giant Anti-Sucking Sound

I just couldn't resist the title of this article: World’s biggest whoopee cushion helps kids understand the science of sound. Who says science can't be fun? Not Professor Trevor Cox, that's for sure:

Trevor Cox, Professor of Acoustic Engineering at Salford University, will deliver this Royal Institution Science for Schools lecture. It is the biggest live event ever to be organised by the Royal Institution of Great Britain and their first-ever collaboration with the Royal Albert Hall. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded the research that forms the basis of the lecture and helped to fund the development of the show.

Audience participation will feature strongly throughout the event. Volunteers will be encouraged to sit on a specially made 2 metre-diameter whoopee cushion – the largest in the world – to demonstrate exactly how wind instruments work. The physics involved when whoopee cushions make a noise is the same as blowing through the mouthpiece of a saxophone, for instance (although the sound produced is quite different!). Trevor’s whoopee cushion will also be assessed at the event for a place in the Guinness World Records.