Why does bamboo make a chattering sound?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Bamboo is a type of grass that grows into big clusters of long, straight stalks. Those stalks are super strong, and are useful for making lots of things, from instruments to gardening tools, to building materials. And when a breeze blows through a bunch of bamboo, it makes a really cool chattering, rattling sound. How does it do that? And why? We asked biologist Lynn Clark to help us find the answer.

Got a question that’s BAMBOOzling you? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll shoot you an answer!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From the brains behind brains on this is the moment of um.
0:07.0	Moment of Um.
0:10.0	Moment of um comes to you from APM studios.
0:15.0	I'm Bagley the Bard, here to tell you a tale.
0:19.0	Um.
0:22.0	Gather round, my friends, for the story. Um. Long ago in a distant land there was a powerful king who had many excellent qualities,
0:37.0	but one great weakness. He was very self-conscious about his nose. For you see he had an adorable little button nose
0:48.0	which he thought was too cute for a mighty ruler. A great king should have a great big nose, he told himself.
0:55.6	Nobody in the kingdom dared mention the king's nose lest they be thrown in the castle
1:01.4	dungeons, but one day the king summoned the royal be thrown in the castle dungeons.
1:02.6	But one day, the king summoned the royal barber.
1:06.2	As the barber snipped delicately at the king's beard,
1:09.5	he felt an overwhelming urge to compliment the king on his sweet little nosy.
1:16.0	He felt like he might explode if he didn't say something, but he was too afraid of the king.
1:22.0	So as soon as he finished,
1:23.4	Waxin the royal mustache, he ran outside
1:26.2	to a pond on the castle grounds,
1:28.2	and whispered his secret into a bamboo grove, I like the king's nose and I think it's cute. He felt much better
1:37.6	after that, but you know, my friends, that secrets don't always stay secret.
1:44.0	When breezes blue through that bamboo grove, it made the chattering sound.
1:49.0	You know, that sound that bamboo stalks make when they move back and forth?
1:53.0	Hmm, I wonder why they do that.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from American Public Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of American Public Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.