Most of us look for an area where we can get some peace and quiet. We look forward to it, but it’s also something that could be maddening.
I’m not talking about the silence of sitting in a room without the TV on or the children around. I’m talking about a space built by Microsoft. It is located in Redmond, Washington, at Microsoft headquarters and is known as the anechoic chamber.
According to the Guinness World Records, the anechoic chamber is the quietest place on earth. It gives a background noise measurement of -20.35 dBA.
Another room at the Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis is said to hold a measurement of -24.9 dBA. They hope to take the title from Microsoft, but for now, Microsoft continues to control it.
Just how quiet is the anechoic chamber at Microsoft? It’s so quiet that you may go mad if you stay in the room too long. Most people can only last 45 minutes or so in the room.
When you sit in the room, the silence is deafening. You begin to hear your heartbeat within a few minutes, followed by the flowing of your blood and even the grinding of your bones.
The only thing you will hear in the room is the motion of your own body. A ringing in your ears will become evident almost immediately.
Essentially, no outside noise enters the room. You bring the noise in with you. Eventually, it will become unbearable to sit in silence, and you will have to leave.
The chamber’s principal designer, Hundraj Gopal, described it this way: “When you turn your head, you can even hear that motion. You can hear yourself breathing, and it sounds somewhat loud.”
In order to achieve this silence, they used six layers of steel and concrete. The room is not connected to the surrounding buildings, and there are springs below the space to dampen any vibrations.
The floor and ceiling have fiberglass wedges. They also include wedges on the walls to keep the sound from bouncing around the room.
The fact that sound waves are not traveling around the room makes it difficult for you to find your way. It could cause you to get off balance.
Most of us won’t have an opportunity to be in this room. They say that silence is golden, but maybe we could be in a slightly noisier environment.