Why Hares Have Long Ears

The children were walking through the forest. They looked and saw a boy standing there with megaphones held up to his ears, supporting them with his hands as he listened. They asked the boy for the megaphones and began listening to the sounds of the forest. It was a sunny day - birds were singing, bees were buzzing, mosquitoes were whining. How interesting! You could hear a dog barking, even though the village was far away, and there was a cow mooing. It was noisy and resonant in the forest - you could hear frogs croaking in the distant swamp, a tractor motor rumbling far away. But take away the megaphones, and silence immediately descends, as if you've gone deaf. A bird chirps right above your head, and you can't hear anything else. The children really liked these megaphones.

They made some just like them from large sheets of cardboard, and to keep them from crumpling, they sewed plastic hoops around the edges. They came to the forest. Irishka set up her megaphone, and Lenya grabbed his and ran to the other end of the clearing. It was a big clearing - Lenya ran three hundred steps and stopped, put his lips to the megaphone and shouted:

"Iri-ish-ka!"

Irishka jumped away from her megaphone - it seemed to her that Lenya had shouted right in her ear.

Irishka spoke into her megaphone very quietly, in a whisper:

"Lenya, speak more quietly."

Lenya listened to Irishka, and it seemed to him that she was whispering right in his ear. Lenya understood that you don't need to shout into such megaphones, and very quietly answered Irishka:

"Okay."

Irishka was getting ready to say something else to Lenya, but at that moment something crashed and boomed so loudly in the sky that even without the megaphones it became clear that this was thunder. Everyone looked at the sky, and there was an enormous cloud, and the sun was already hiding behind it.

"Lenya, run here!" Tanya shouted and hid with Irishka under a tree. As soon as Lenya ran up, a terrible downpour struck. All around, rain was pouring down like from a bucket, and Lenya got thirsty - so thirsty that he couldn't hold back. He jumped out into the rain, opened his mouth, and tried to drink the drops - he wanted to quench his thirst. Tanya laughed, pulled out a folding camping cup, and set it on the grass. Of course, more drops would fall into the cup than into an open mouth, but still it wasn't much - it would take a long time for the water to collect. And then Irishka figured out what to do. She grabbed her huge megaphone, turned the wide end upward, and held the narrow end over the cup. Into the wide end of the megaphone, many raindrops fell at once, and they all flowed down into the narrow end, and there - water was running from the megaphone into the cup like from a water pipe! Lenya drank his fill, and Tanya said:

"Well done, Irishka! So, who understood why you can hear better with a megaphone?"

"A megaphone has one wide end," said Irishka. "Sound enters it in large amounts, and then it all gathers in the ear, like in a funnel."

"So, a hare's ears are also like two megaphones?" asked Lenya.

"That's right!" Irishka answered cheerfully.

And the rain stopped.

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It's best to do experiments with megaphones outdoors, in the forest or in the field. After all, if you shout into a large megaphone in an enclosed space, such a volume will result that it will be unpleasant. When talking in the forest or field, such megaphones can be placed at a distance of 150-200 meters from each other. When talking, you can use your voice quietly. It's better to make megaphones from drawing paper or cardboard, not just cone-shaped, but with a narrowing and widening at the ends! If you have a toy wind instrument - a pipe, a trumpet, or some other - try blowing into it with a megaphone at the wide end of the pipe, inserting it into the narrow end of the megaphone, wrapping it with an insulating tape coil in the free end of the pipe. It will be about two sounds higher. You can play this way.