Decibel #13

Here’s some things from around the internet I consumed this week and found interesting:

1. How trail designers build good hikes

(5 min video) 2. [How Sound Works](https://ciechanow.ski/sound/) (interactive article) 3. [1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1815_eruption_of_Mount_Tambora) (wikipedia article)

Below, find some of my thoughts.

1. **How trail designers build good hikes

**

I like walking on a good trail, but haven’t given much thought to how they are made before.

2. How Sound Works

Ciechanowski’s website is a work of art. His articles explaining how things work is on another level; it’s the gold standard for me for explaining things on the internet. His newest post explores how sound works. For this one, I already knew almost all of the material he presented, but I still found it fun to go through his explanations.

I especially found it fun to create custom waveforms and explore how that changes the timbre of the sound. I remember doing a very simplistic version of that back in an electronics class in college, but the ease of just drawing a waveform and immediately hearing it here is worth checking out. The custom waveform then later being broken down into its collection of sine waves with the fourier transform is top tier.

Definitely worth checking out.

3. 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora

Kurzgesagt released a video this week on supervolcanos which sent me down a wikipedia spiral. In particular the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora drew my attention. It released so much ash and sulfur into the atmosphere that it caused a volcanic winter. In fact, the following summer is called the Year Without a Summer with France averaging 3C colder (global average 0.5C colder).

I normally think of the years as being more or less interchangeable, with one winter being no different from the next. But looking back through histories of large volcanic eruptions, it’s clear that this just isn’t always the case, even on some human lifetimes. It’s wild thinking about it being 3C colder all summer in France because of a volcano halfway around the world. Crops, animals, ecosystems all disrupted.

I learned that in the years following big volcanic explosions, the average color in paintings gets noticeably more red! In fact, Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream has deep red skies, likely inspired by an 1883 eruption in Krakatoa.

I don’t have any deep revelations regarding life and volcanos. Surprised at just how much impact they could have on temperatures and colors halfway around the world, I’m sure I could make something up regarding the unknown consequences of our actions, or the interconnectedness of our world, but in reality, I simply just found them fascinating. Maybe you will too.