Question

The decibel level of sound is 50 dB greater on a busy street than in a quiet room where the intensity of sound is watt/m2.

The level of sound in the quiet room is dB, and the intensity of sound in the busy street is_ watt/m2.
Use the formula , where is the sound level in decibels, I is the intensity of sound, and is the smallest sound intensity that can be heard by the human ear (roughly equal to watts/m2).

Answer 1

Hi and welcome to QuestionCove!
I think something went wrong when you copied the question here. The values for the sound level in decibels and watts/m^2 aren't showing up.
That being said, I can still tell you about converting decibels to watts/m^2.
Starting from 0 decibels, that would be equal to \[1*10^{-12} W/m ^{2}\]
In other words, 1 divided by 10^12.
Every time the decibels increase by 10 levels, you multiply the watts/m^2 by 10.
For example, 10 decibels is 1/10^11
20 would be 1/10^10
30 would be 1/10^9
And so on

Answer 2

Having said all that, if the difference in sound between the street and the room is 50 decibels,
That means that to get from the indoor sound (in w/m^2) to the outdoor sound, all you have to do is multiply the indoor sound by 10^5

Answer 3

what would be the level of the sound in the quiet room 10,20, or 100

Answer 4

We know that the level of sound in the room is 50 decibels lower than the level of sound in the street. What's the level of sound in the street?

Answer 5

Or, if we want to find the level of sound in the street, we'd need the level of sound in the room. Does the question give you either value?

Answer 6

the intensity of sound in the busy street is either 10^-1, 10^-5, or 10^-10

Answer 7

Ok, those are your answer choices, I see. But in the question, doesn't it tell you the level of sound in the quiet room? For some reason, that number didn't show up in your original post

Answer 8

no it just give me the options 10,20,100

Answer 9

Oh, ok, so maybe the question is asking to convert each of those decibel values?
So, since out in the street is 50 db louder than in the room...
10 db inside would mean 60 db outside
20 db inside would mean 70 db outside
100 db inside would mean 150 db outside

Answer 10

Next, you want to convert these db values to watts/m^2 values, right?
Use the formula\[10^{-12} *10^{x}\]
Where 'x' is the decibel value divided by 10. That should be a correct conversion from decibels to Watts/m^2

Answer 11

For example, 50 db divided by 10 is 5, so we plug 5 into the equation in place of x...\[10^{-12}\times10^{5}=10^{-7}\]
So the sound in the street would have a level of 10^(-7) watts/m^2

Answer 12

You can use the same method for the actual sound levels we found
60 db
70 db and
150 db

Answer 13

Hey, 10^-7 is not a option

Answer 14

That's true, I was using 50 db as an example.
But now that I look at it, none of the outdoor decibel values match with the answer choices. That's strange.
Actually, looking at the answer choices, 10^-1 would be 40 decibels higher than 10^-5, which would be 50 decibels higher than the next choice, 10^-10.
But the decibels we're given are 10, 20, and 100, which differ from each other by 10 and 80, from lowest to highest.

Answer 15

Are we sure that we're interpreting the numbers correctly?
As in, 10, 20, and 100 definitely stand for the db of the quiet room?
And 10^-1, 10^-5, and 10^-10 definitely stand for the watts/m^2 of the noisy street?
If so, that doesn't really seem to match up.