why are crowds louder than small groups/individuals even if each person produces the same amount of noise? In other words why would a group of people, each generating noise at Xdb sound louder than an individual generating noise at Xdb? How does cumulative sound work?
In: Physics
So pretty much imagine sounds as waves (like water)
When u have one guy shouting, u have one ripple.
When u have ten guys shouting, interference(addition of waves) occurs where the 10 ripples will meet each other and amplify each other’s effect (by 10×).
So pretty much sound adds up it’s loudness like 1+1=2
Take another example, of noise cancellation, if you have a sound of antiphase (which is just the same sound but negative), it will cancel each other out: like a 1+-1=0
So pretty much in airpods what happens is the microphone in the airpods pick up outside noise, flips it around and plays it back to you which ends up cancelling each other out
Note: It is not good to measure sound with decibel, decibel is derived from logarithmic of intensity. When u add sound, it will add like 1+1 intensity. Simply put it, when u use decibel it accounts for the 10power of intensity… (100 is 2 and 1000 is 3 for example, if u add 100 and 1000 u get 1200 but if u use decibel 2+3=5 which converts to 100000)
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