Engebretson Collection of Geoscience Audio Visualizations
Geophysicist Dave Engebretson of Western Washington University has developed a collection of audio visualizations of geoscience data for use in the classroom. Below are a few examples from the collection. For background information about audio visualizations, see the page Using Audio to Visualize Scientific Concepts.
Tidal heights at Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, Washington. Tidal heights are mapped into tones. High tides are mapped to high frequencies and lower tidal heights are low frequencies. Tone bursts occur every hour of Earth time.
85 million years of Earth's magnetic reversals. 1 million year of Earth time is 1 second of audio time. Tones are based on the length of a polarity interval. Short intervals are mapped into high tones, long intervals are mapped into low tones.
Topographic flyover along the equator. Low tones represent deep oceans and high tones represent high mountains.
Topographic flyover along the equator. Low tones represent deep oceans and high tones represent high mountains.