Basically Are sound waves consumed with more ears or do they stay the same?
In: Physics
No, because the sound one hears is already just a tiny part of the total sound.
Sound spreads in every direction, regardless if there is someone to “hear” it. Some things can reflect and redirect sound in a direction but ultimately the sound just spreads thinner and thinner and is absorbed by stuff in the environment. If the “stuff” that absorbs the sound is an eardrum that is known as “hearing”.
sorta? it would get quieter, but not by the ears “consuming” the sound.
sound waves can be broken up by a lot of people to bounce off and disrupt the wavefront, and human flesh and clothes are poor reflectors of sound, all of which makes it weaker, so yes, a lot of people stood between you and the speaker would reduce the volume of the speaker.
Sounds don’t get “sucked” by the ears. Sound waves just travel through things and/or bounce off of things.
If you put more barriers between the sound (voice) and the receptor (ears) the sound will be partially blocked by those obstacles (in this case, people) and will lose its strength until it cannot be heard anymore.
A closed door blocks the sound well due to covering a large area and leaving not much room for the sound to pass (the sound will still go through the door and the tiny gaps around the door). People will also partially block the sound.
You know when people are trying to say something they don’t want other people to hear they put their hands covering their mouths on one end (from the subject POV) but the other end is open? So the sound will have more obstacles on one side and not the other making it more difficult for someone across the room to hear it.
Yes but instead of the ears, they are “consumed” (absorbed) by the soft bodies of people instead of going straight into a wall and bouncing back (echo). If all the people happen to be talking/whispering they make white noise and drowns the stage person’s talking voice a little bit.
source: I am a piano accompanist for a choir. I have to play with more effort in concerts than during rehearsal. The people I work with tend to say I play too loud during rehearsal, and too soft during concerts, when in reality I play the same exact manner.
Sound waves would be blocked by more people around, but more ears wouldn’t consume them.
If you surrounded the speaker with 10 nearby people, the further person would hear slightly less because the 10 people are blocking the sound from traveling.
But if those 10 people were dead, the result for the further person would br exactly the same.
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