An Acoustic Scale Model of Stonehenge

The Sound Blog

How was it built?

The 1:12 scale model of Stonehenge in the semi-anechoic chamber at the University of Salford. The model is about 2.6m in diameter (for original was about 30m across).

Over the last 18 months I’ve been constructing a 1:12 scale model of Stonehenge. I want to better understand the ancient acoustics within the circle. By creating Stonehenge ‘Lego’ I can test how the site would have sounded in it’s various historic configurations. With so many stones displaced or missing in Stonehenge, the acoustics nowadays is very different to how it would have sounded thousands of years ago.

Basics of acoustic scale modelling

Scale models are a tried and tested technique in acoustics, with a history dating back to the 1930s [1]. For this 1:12 scale model, we shrunk all the dimensions of the structure by a factor of 12 and then tested it using sound at…

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