1. Echolocation
By:Pema Gurung

2. How do animal use echolocation?
According to the animal, (let’s use a bat as an example) sends out sound waves, by making different sounds, ( the bat will make sounds with it’s mouth or nose). The sound waves then hits an object or organism. This produces an echo, letting the animals know what is around them. Animals use echolocation to find food, avoid prey and navigate in the dark.
In this picture, you can see, a bat, it produces a sound, and the sound waves hit the fly, then it echos back to the bat. Letting the bat know what is in front of it.

3. Can people use echolocation?
seems to say some blind people use echolocation , but really anyone can learn. You have to make clicking noises with your mouth, and learn how to recognize small changes in the way the clicks sound, depending on what object is near by. When you talk into a fan, your voice sounds different, this is how you have to identify, and practice echolocation.
In this picture the person, is making sounds from there mouth, and he can hear the echo from the bat. Telling him that there is a bat in front of him.

4. Question: Hypothesis: Can humans use echolocation?
I, think that we would be able to learn how to use echolocation, it would be difficult but eventually we could get the hang of things, I think this because animals know how to use echolocation.

5. Purpose:
I chose to do my project on echolocation because I wanted to know if it was possible for humans to learn echolocation. I wanted to test this question out. In my final results, I will conclude people can learn echolocation if in total the overall correct percentage is at least 80.

6. Materials:
Folder
Clipboard
Water bottle
Organism (hand)
Participants
Blindfold ( Scarf)

7. Procedure:
Step 1: explain to the participants what they need to do, and what echolocation is
Step 2: let them get familiar with all the objects, by making sounds near the objects.
Step 3: blindfold the participants
Step 4: place the objects estimated 10 inches from their ear
Step 5: let them guess what the object is
Step 6: repeat steps 4 and 5 for all objects.

9. Data table Water bottle- 31.25% Folder- 33.34% Clipboard- 68.75%
Organism- 50%

10. Conclusion:
Can humans learn echolocation . Well, the overall percent of correct is, %, so it seems people can not learn echolocation. So, my hypothesis was wrong however there were alot of variables that could have affected the results. For example, how loud it was in the room might have affected how the echo sound. Another variable could be how much water was in the water bottle, or how many papers were in the folder. The distance was also not exactly ten inches from the participants ear. And, finally, the participants could have also affected the experiment, their hearing ability, and the sounds they made, around the object. When doing the experiment I told the participants that they need to make the same sound around the objects, same pitch same volume, but they could have done different pitches, which could have also affected the results.

11. What could I have done better?
Make sure that the room is completely quiet.
Make sure the items are exactly 10 inches from the participants ear.
Have all trials for each person on one day.

12. Material:
The material of the items I tested, affect the echo. Some objects had better results. The clipboard had the best result.Clipboards are often made of, masonite or particleboard, both are a type of wood. Folders are usually made with paper. This is one thing that could have affected the echo. The material of the items that we tested. The hollowness of the items can also affect the sound. The water bottle was sometimes half full, sometimes completely full this could have also affected the sound.

13. Why should we learn echolocation?
Echolocation could be taught for safety, when placed in a situation when the person can’t see, such as being locked in a dark room you should be able to know where you are. You could use sound to help you. I looked at many cases on , and found that many hostages were left in a situation where they can’t see. They don’t know where they are who’s around them, so if you were able to learn echolocation, that would be your other way to “see”.