Science Questions

Why does the sound of nails on a chalk board get such a physical reaction from us? Genevieve, USA

It’s horrible, isn’t it?  The reason for this is not 100% known but there is a hypothesis.  The idea is that the kind of frequencies that you get when you get the fingernails-down-the-blackboard experience is similar to the kind of frequencies that animals release when they’re in distress.  It’s a kind of distress signal and therefore we are pre-programmed or galvanised into action by those particular choice of frequencies.

June 2008