For years, Ville Pulkki has been wondering why it feels so difficult to shout upwind. The sensation is common enough to have found its way into an idiom about not being understood. But Pulkki, a professor of acoustics at Aalto University, wanted a scientific explanation for the phenomenon – and there wasn’t been one.
In a new study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, Pulkki’s research team showed that our common sense understanding of this situation is wrong. It isn’t harder to shout into the wind; it’s just harder to hear yourself.
In fact, acousticians have long known that sound carries better within the first 100 metres upwind. Many people have noticed that a siren sounds louder as it approaches and then quieter as it moves away. The mechanics behind this is similar to the Doppler effect, in which a sound changes frequency as it moves.
