SANTA MARIA, Nov 30 — Mention vuvuzela to football fans, and they may cringe. The plastic horn rose to prominence during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, where tens of thousands vuvuzelas blared in packed stadiums, blasting eardrums and disrupting players on the field and even fans watching the event on television.
For the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, organizers have introduced the maraca-like caxirola as the official instrument of the event. Invented by Brazilian musician Carlinhos Brown to be more subdued than the vuvuzela, the caxirola is based on the African caxixi.
To test the theory that the caxirola is quieter than its vuvuzela counterpart, researchers Talita Pozzer and Stephan Paul of the Federal University of Santa Maria in Brazil studied the acoustics of the instrument, finding that a single caxirola, at least, poses no threat to the user's ear.
Recruiting 22 volunteers to loan their ears to the study, the researchers found that when you shake the caxirola, the sound pressure levels were comparable to that of a normal conversation, around 45 decibels lower than that of the vuvuzela, corresponding to 1/30,000th times the sound energy. In other words, you would need 30,000 caxirolas to produce the same sound pressure level as a single vuvuzela.
Still, since its introduction last year, the caxirola has already been mired in controversy. After disgruntled fans hurled the instrument on the field during a match in April, officials banned it for the Confederations Cup last summer. Whether the caxirola will be distributed during the 2014 World Cup has yet to be determined, Paul said.
Perhaps it's not the caxirola's acoustics that's a cause for concern but its aerodynamics. — AFP-Relaxnews
