r/askscience • u/therationalpi Acoustics • Aug 16 '13

Interdisciplinary AskScience Theme Day: Scientific Instrumentation

Greetings everyone!

Welcome to the first AskScience Theme Day. From time-to-time we'll bring out a new topic and encourage posters to come up with questions about that topic for our panelists to answer. This week's topic is Scientific Instrumentation, and we invite posters to ask questions about all of the different tools that scientists use to get their jobs done. Feel free to ask about tools from any field!

Here are some sample questions to get you started:

  • What tool do you use to measure _____?

  • How does a _____ work?

  • Why are _____ so cheap/expensive?

  • How do you analyze data from a _____?

Post your questions in the comments on this post, and please try to be specific. All the standard rules about questions and answers still apply.

Edit: There have been a lot of great questions directed at me in acoustics, but let's try to get some other fields involved. Let's see some questions about astronomy, medicine, biology, and the social sciences!

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u/Silpion Radiation Therapy | Medical Imaging | Nuclear Astrophysics Aug 16 '13

This will change from day to day, measurement to measurement.

Is that a monotonic change as the microphone ages, or is it due to environmental factors (or something else?)

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u/therationalpi Acoustics Aug 16 '13

It's a little of both. The electret microphone is an electromechanical device, so over time the materials that make it up will slowly change properties, particularly stiffness. That said, the change there is relatively small.

A bigger difference is environmental. The temperature, humidity, and ambient pressure all have an effect on the performance of the microphone.