[Tfug] Why do they whine?

[sitkaa at email.arizona.edu]

I have noticed those whines in many electronic objects. Through some quirk of
either genetics or merely attention, it seems that I can hear frequencies that
most people cannot. Those high pitched whines really drive me nuts.

The chargers I have for my cell phone are always whining. The one in 
the car is
so loud that I can hardly stand to have it plugged in, yet my wife cannot hear
it all. And television tubes have been driving me up the walls since I was a
child. Even my lapton is droning on with its high pitched sound.

If everybody could hear these things, surely they wouldn't be designed thusly.

Typically, as we grow older, we lose some of the capacity to high pitched
sounds. I keep waiting for this to happen to me so I can be oblivious, like
everyone else. In fact, there is some gadget that is being marketed in the UK
that emits a loud high pitched tone that only teenagers can hear (to 
drive away
the rifraff), kinda like the cell phone rings that are too high for parents to
hear.




Quoting Ryan Cresawn <jrcresawn at gmail.com>:

> On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 2:11 PM, erich <erich1 at copper.net> wrote:
>> OK,
>>         I went to the recent Worldcare outdoor sale, and bought a switch.
>>  Brought it back home. Connected it to my system, and plugged it in to
>>  TU Electric and noticed a whine. The whine is rather annoying when you're
>>  trying to sleep. I've managed to reduce the sound somewhat.
>>         I noticed no ventilation holes in this thing, so the sound is
>>  probably
>>  not comming from a fan. What makes a switch whine?
>
> Type "capacitor whine" into Google and you'll find many results.  I'm
> not sure if it indicates any trouble.  You'll probably want to dig
> deeper.
>
> Ryan
>
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