Why the Greeks could hear plays from the back row
An ancient theatre filters out low-frequency background noise.
The wonderful acoustics for which the ancient Greek theatre of Epidaurus is renowned may come from exploiting complex acoustic physics, new research shows.
Read the story here.
Comments
These kinds of researches are excellent ways for retrieving the architectonic sciences of various civilizations and rewrite them with modern scientific formats. However, some researchers in the field of mathematics and physics think that ancient and medieval architects were not experts in mathematics and physics, and therefore when they decode the designs of their architectonic buildings they declare, we are not sure about, did he design it based on similar basic knowledge or not? Or as in this news, they say, it's not clear whether this property comes from chance or design. They destroy the original design-patent of the master-designer. Researchers sometime think that the analytic and mental abilities of the architectonic-minds did change along history, without taking into their considerations the indirect effects of the accumulation of industrial researches that change and improve only the material quality of the architectural products and not the mathematical and geometrical knowledge behind their design philosophy. An example of these researches is the recent report of Peter J. Lu et al, in Science, on the decagonal Girih patterns. Contrary to what they have suggested, medieval (and nowadays) architects used very simple and fast technique in order to design and implement the decagonal patterns based on three types of overlapped but hidden grids with the same interval (two of them are tilted on both sides by 72° and 36°), using only the T-square and two triangle: 18°/72° and 54°/36°, without using the slow-compass. Besides, any girih pattern has thematic and repeated modular unit, i.e., the researchers studied only what is inside the domain of the repeated modular unit. I hope that the researchers who studied the fantastic Greek theater do not devaluate the design-patent of its knowledgeable architect(s).
Posted by: Hossam Aboulfotouh | March 26, 2007 03:40 PM
Our greek ancestors left several written sourses on which we can count today.Yet,interesting is the fact that although many refer to the theatre of Epidaurus,none menions its perfect acoustics.This propably means that it was as exceptional as any other theatre built around the 4th c b.C.As a greek I want to thank the researchers from Atlanta for their work and love for knowledge.
Posted by: gina | March 27, 2007 03:02 PM