Hey friends. It's Moment of Um producer Anna Goldfield. I want to just take a minute to talk to the adults listening about public media. You may have heard that public media is facing federal budget cuts, and that includes Moment of Um and all your favorite Brains on Universe podcasts. If you want to protect your favorite public media programming and podcasts, like this one, visit Americanpublicmedia.org slash action to learn how you can help.

One more time, that's Americanpublicmedia.org slash action.

Thanks so much for standing up for public media.

Are you ready? Because it's time for the moment of um. so much for standing up for public media.

Are you ready?

Because it's time for the moment of um.

This is where we answer the questions that make us go... Moment of Um-um is brought to you by the Brainsins On podcast. I'm Mark Sanchez.

Um.

Let's all take a trip to the beach, shall we?

The sound of waves coming on the shore, oh, that just puts me at ease.

I can almost feel the sand between my toes as I take

a relaxing stroll along the beach. It's such a great sound. It's no wonder people think they hear

the ocean when they put a seashell to their ears. An ocean in a seashell is what got Felix from Stockton,

New Jersey thinking. I would like to know how you hear the ocean in a shell.

Not only did Felix send us this question, but he also took a stab at answering it.

So basically, it's probably just the air rushing around inside the shell from other things and other animals.

So when you do hear the show, there's ocean in the shell,

well, then it's not really the ocean, it's just the air that you hear in the shell.

He's correct.

My name is Steve Aretti.

I'm an emeritus professor of physics here at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

If you have any arbitrarily shaped container, for example, a pop bottle, there will be resonances of sound at certain frequencies because of the shape of that container.

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