Students Find Ring Tone Adults Can't Hear

[Amelia]

Students Find Ring Tone Adults Can't Hear

Students in NYC Use High-Frequency Ring Tone Inaudible to Adults to Evade Cell-Phone Rules

NEW YORK Jun 12, 2006 (AP)— Students are using a new ring tone to receive messages in class — and many teachers can't even hear the ring.

Some students are downloading a ring tone off the Internet that is too high-pitched to be heard by most adults. With it, high schoolers can receive text message alerts on their cell phones without the teacher knowing.

As people age, many develop what's known as aging ear — a loss of the ability to hear higher-frequency sounds.

The ring tone is a spin-off of technology that was originally meant to repel teenagers — not help them. A Welsh security company developed the tone to help shopkeepers disperse young people loitering in front of their stores while leaving adults unaffected. The company called their product the "Mosquito."

Donna Lewis, a teacher in Manhattan, says her colleague played the ring for a classroom of first-graders — and all of them could hear it, while the adults couldn't hear anything.

[Ron Lambert]

Once many years ago when I was playing with an electronic experiments kit in my room with the door shut, I added different resistors into a circuit with a speaker to get successively higher pitched sounds. Finally I reached the point where I heard no sound at all, even with my ear right over the speaker. Then a moment later, one of my younger brothers who was in the next room, complained about the loud noise!

[cricket]

I can hear it. Wonder if that makes me not an adult?!?

[Nan]

Nah, Cricket, you just are very well preserved!!

[Gail]

This kinda makes up for the times when adults ask the kids to do something and the KIDS don't hear...

I wish there was a way that we parents could capitalize on that better