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Comment by Cerium | Hacker News Reader

Be careful dropping glass bottles into recycling bins too; they pose nearly the same problem - they don't usually shatter and the sound escapes the bin upwards towards you.

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Why isn't this taught to everyone at a young age? I had no idea this could happen and it kind of terrifies me that I can lose my hearing so easily like this without having any clue.

Then go buy the toilet lids that don’t drop with the acceleration of gravity, i. e., “soft close”. Hearing loss or not, I don’t want to hear anyone dropping the toilet lid in the middle of the night.

I don't believe we're talking about the same thing.

The ceramic lid usually goes over the water tank.

(also, you can't control all the toilets in the world)

> (also, you can't control all the toilets in the world)

But imagine if you could!

The culprit was actually a lid on the tank. I've never seen a toilet lid, soft close or not, that doesn't have plastic pieces that prevent full direct contact between the lid and the part below it. They'll deform under pressure, taking the noise level down from unbearable to just loud.

Yeah, I saw that it was the lid after I posted. In fact, I even remember the original post, and at the time thought, "huh, never even thought of that". Welcome to middle age, where a lot of stuff starts to occur to you after the fact. :-|

Even though this isn’t the same thing op is talking about, I also vouch for these. Slow-close toilet lids are amazing. The only problem is when you visit someone else’s house, you have to be conscious when using their toilets else you end up slamming the lid accidentally by reflexively just starting the closing process and finding out they aren’t slow-close lids (BANG!)

This is the first time I've heard of it, and I studied engineering.

Wish I knew this back when I worked in bars, emptying big bins of glass into the outdoor bins. Learnt quickly to look up when I did it.

How would looking up help, though? Unless I’m misunderstanding, the sound would still be coming up straight towards your face/ears.

You look up by bending your neck and your upper back, so when your body is bent forward, looking up will actually move your head (incl your ears) further away from the glass bin.

rather than your ears concentrating/funneling the sound into your ear canal, they would be muffling it since the direct sound wave direction would basically now point into your earlobe

What the other kind commenters said. I just found it worked. I like the analogy of the funnel, pointing it 90 degrees from where it usually is. OH&S wasn't such a thing back in my day (and I'm not even that old), smoking inside was still a thing (banned in that Australian state I was in a long time ago now). I'd use the air conditioners as a break to get some fresh air.

But anyway, a big bin full of glass being emptied was damn loud, but all the concerts I went to wouldn't have helped.

I've been surprised at how loud emptying a bucket of aluminum cans into an empty bin can be, the half open lid also reflects the sound back toward you.

Yes, that's the recurrent loudest noise I experience in my life. Not so many times per year obviously, but more than concerts or disco. I should try bending knees to put my ears below the top of the bin.

I've started tilting the bin at a 45 degree angle, and sliding the bottles in. Seems to help somewhat.

Yeah, and it’s even worse if the bin happens to be in an enclosed space!

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