One person talking softly in a room is about 60dB. If 100 people in the room are all talking at the same level the intensity is now?
To determine the intensity when 100 people are talking at the same level, we need to consider the concept of sound intensity and the rules of adding sound sources.
Sound intensity measures the amount of sound energy per unit of area. It is given by the formula:
I = P/A
where:
I is the sound intensity,
P is the power (or energy) of the sound source, and
A is the area over which the sound is distributed.
In this case, let's assume that each individual person talking softly in the room produces a sound power of P1, and the area over which the sound is distributed is the same for each person.
Now, we need to consider the concept of sound power addition. When multiple sound sources emit sound simultaneously, the total power of the combined sound is the sum of the powers of the individual sources.
So, if we have 100 people talking at the same level, the total power (P_total) of their combined sound is:
P_total = P1 + P1 + P1 + ... + P1 (100 times)
Since each person is producing sound at the same level, we can rewrite it as:
P_total = 100 * P1
Now that we have the total power, we can calculate the intensity. Let's assume the area of the room is A. The intensity (I_total) when 100 people are talking is:
I_total = P_total / A
= (100 * P1) / A
Therefore, the intensity when 100 people are talking at the same level is 100 times the intensity of a single person talking softly in the room.