Scientists Are Trying to Fix the Worst Sound in the World: the Dentist’s Drill

If you’re nervous about going to the dentist, you’re not alone. In fact, dental anxiety has an official name, odontophobia, and it’s a real problem, because it keeps people from maintaining their dental hygiene. One dentist is on a mission to ease people’s odontophobia by addressing one of the triggers—the terrible sound of dental drills.

Tomomi Yamada, a dentist at the University of Osaka’s graduate school of dentistry, and colleagues have investigated the aerodynamics of…