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I was interested to learn that the loudest possible sound on Earth would be 194 db. [0] Krakatoa apparently "only" clocked in at 180 db, meaning the loudest po
by pmiller2 6y ago
I was interested to learn that the loudest possible sound on Earth would be 194 db. [0] Krakatoa apparently "only" clocked in at 180 db, meaning the loudest possible sound is about 5x louder than said eruption.
- gns24 6y agoThe article states that the sound from Krakatoa was well over the 194dB limit.
- OldHand2018 6y agoIf a reader were skimming the article, they might have missed that the 172 decibel "reading" was measured at a gasworks 100 miles from the eruption!
- greypowerOz 6y agoIIRC A 10 Db increase in SPL is perceived by most people as a doubling of "volume". thr article mentions this too... its hard to get a feel for log scales lol.
- pmiller2 6y agoYeah, it's funny how humans don't really comprehend logarithmic or exponential growth, yet, the whole reason we use a log scale for stuff like sound pressure is that our nervous system has a logarithmic response curve.
- singhkays 6y agoTIL how the decibel scale works. Genuine question, how's the difference between 194db and 180db only 5x? Shouldn't it be more than 10x?
- adamjb 6y agoThe decibel is defined as a tenth of the log10 of power, so power doubles every ~3dB. Amplitude and pressure are proportional to the root of power, so amplitude doubles every ~6db. Loudness is roughly proportional to the root of amplitude so it doubles every ~9dB. This leads to confusion when people don't specify which quantity they are comparing.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago194 db is the loudest possible sound, where sound is an oscillating pressure wave. Pressure above 194 db become Shock or blast waves, which are a pressure pulse. https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/sound.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/sound.html