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November 3, 2006

Strange But True!

Q. Just how loud do the cheering, jeering fans get at a pro football game? a) It's like being front row at a Kiss concert b) It's a tempest in a teacup c) The noise is psychologically intimidating as well as physically challenging d) The sound stays pretty well contained within the stadium, and not much out beyond.

A. Check all of the above. The loudest crowd ever recorded at a game, according to the Royal Association for Deaf People(!), was in 2000 in Denver, in an undomed stadium, says Timothy Gay, Ph.D., in “Football Physics.” It registered 128.7 decibels, beyond the threshold of pain for most people and comparable to 120 decibels for a rock concert. Imagine the Bronco fans could have kept this up for four full quarters — i.e., four hours of nonstop yelling at an energy flux of .5 pound-force feet per second per square foot, almost a trillion times more intense than the sound of normal breathing. Still, if you put a teacup of water at midfield, the sonic energy would raise the water temperature less than 3 degrees (tempest in a teacup). What this shows is the incredible sensitivity of the human ear.


 
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