How old are your ears?!
It’s a well known fact that Humans loose their clarity of hearing with age.
However, it’s lesser known that the exact ability that human auditory equipment loose, is the ability to hear higher frequency sounds . ie, as humans grow older, they gradually loose their ability to hear high frequency sounds.
And with a little bit of imagination, and this little piece of trivia turns into a new weapon to add into the arsenal for the perpetual struggle between Adults and Youth. The Mosquito is a product that uses this idea to selectively drive teenagers away from no-loiter zones — by emitting tones that adults cannot sense.
From the home-page of the product:
The Mosquito ultrasonic teenage deterrent is the solution to the eternal problem of unwanted gatherings of youths and teenagers in shopping malls and around shops. The presence of these teenagers discourages genuine shoppers and customers’ from coming into your shop, affecting your turnover and profits. Anti social behaviour has become the biggest threat to private property over the last decade and there has been no effective deterrent until now.
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More recently, since the secret behind “The_Mosquito” device is out, the younger generation has “customized” the tone emitted by The Mosquito into class-room ring tones for their mobiles, which teachers can’t hear.
The site: Ultrasonic-Ringtones allows you to hear ring tones of various frequencies, and makes a guess about your age, based on what frequencies you’re able to hear.
Here’s my result:
You are about 20 years old.
The teen repellent will no longer foil you, but you can still hear some pretty high tones.The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ring tone that I can hear is 16.7kHz.
Amazing, hmm?
Links:
Penn-Health article on age-related hearing loss
Ultrasonic-Ringtones
Compound Security Home-Page