Whispering gallery

Imagining a woman confessing her sins to a priest, Bloom explores a bizarre fancy that their low whispers might be overheard because of a hidden feature of the confession box: "And I schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha? And why did you? Look down at her ring to find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears. Husband learn to his surprise. God's little joke." Whispering galleries are curved structures which transmit sound waves unusually well, allowing a person to hear the whispered words of another person at a position far removed.

John Hunt 2019

  The whispering gallery in the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, photographed in 2011 by Femtoquake. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

  Map of a 69 Hz wave in a cylinder of air with the 33.7m diameter of the St. Paul's whispering gallery, created at the Applied Solid State Physics Laboratory of Hokkaido University Sapporo, Japan in 2012, with red and blue representing higher and lower air pressures, and distortion in the grid lines representing air particle displacements. Source: Wikimedia Commons.