Noise Pollution

Noise is usually defined as unwanted sound, an airplane flying by, construction workers working on a building, but when is there too much noise? When there is too much noise it is considered noise pollution. Noise pollution is excessive noise created by nature or by machines that disturbs our everyday lives. Noise pollution can be extremely dangerous and can cause hearing damage and even complete loss of hearing.  Noise pollution can even damage animals in the environment by disrupting mating calls and other uses they have for sound.

Noise pollution has been around for a very long time and has given many people hearing damage and loss. Noise pollution can affect both humans and animals alike, having similar or different consequences. In humans’, noise pollution can affect both physiological and psychological health, which can result in annoyance and aggression, hypertension, high stress levels, tinnitus, hearing loss, sleep disturbances, and other harmful effects. All of these things that affect humans can be very dangerous and can also be dangerous to the people around you. Noise pollution can also make life harder with hearing loss and damage, and even when you’re older the effects will stay with you. Noise pollution can be devastating to people’s lives, making them disabled, or unable to work, but animals also face problems with noise pollution since it can interrupt mating calls making it harder for them to find mates. IT can also affect animals by changing the balance between predator-prey detection and avoidance. These effects on animals can seriously affect their lives; sometimes even more than ours.

             Noise pollution can be a huge problem in some areas, affecting animals and people. In some areas with high noise pollution some daytime birds sing during the night to have clearer messages because of the noise pollution. To humans it can also be a problem that there are high levels of noise pollution. Noise pollution can have very bad effects on people and can also cause annoyance and aggression, hypertension, high stress levels, tinnitus, hearing loss, sleep disturbances, and other harmful effects. In big cities noise pollution can affect lots of people. Imagine sitting in your car in the middle of traffic with extremely loud noises of horns honking, people yelling. Wouldn’t this make you stressed? The negative effects of noise pollution can be worse than people may think. Probably the most common effect of noise pollution is hearing loss and damage. Many people have lost their hearing to noise pollution which means they probably can’t work; this would make their lives much harder.

            Many things have been done to stop noise pollution on highways and other areas. On some highways they do things such as adding sound barriers, limiting speed, limiting heavy vehicles, changing surface texture, and tire design. This has significantly reduced sound on some roads and even something as small as changing the tire of your car can make the streets so much quieter. Speed limits are not specially used for sound reduction but they can be used not only to prevent accidents but also to limit sound. Sound barriers obviously can’t be used on downtown streets and suburbia streets, but on large highways it can be helpful to limit sound. A good example of a more modern sound barrier is the Sound Tunnel in Melbourne, Australia. During the 70’s and 80’s there were many attempts at making quieter jet engines. Although not much progress has been made, some reduction to airplane sound has been made.

            Science has many limitations in solving the issue of noise pollution. Probably the biggest problem is that sound cannot be totally removed (At least not yet). Noise pollution is bad because of excessive noise so the solution would be getting rid of some of the sound but not all of it. This can be an issue because if you are trying to remove some sound from a lot of sound there are tons of factors causing the sound so you can’t just quiet down the cars without quieting something else. The limitations of getting rid of noise pollution are very large, but there are some advantages in getting rid of it. Since the biggest problems of noise pollution are man-made, we know how to quiet them down but actually making the changes is what holds us back. It is hard to make large changes to our everyday lives just to make the world a little quieter. It would be impossible to stop people from driving cars in the name of making the world quiet. The limitations of preventing noise pollution far outweigh the advantages, making noise pollution something very hard to get rid of.

            Noise pollution has been annoying people for many, many years but still we seem unable to prevent it. There have been laws to prevent noise pollution but to fully exterminate it would be like setting ice on fire. The first law was produced in 1975 for Portland, Oregon, with funding from the EPA. In Portland fines for violating noise codes can reach as high as $5000! The many efforts to get rid of noise pollution have made small improvements but have ultimately not been extremely effective. Since sound is something we absolutely need in our lives we can’t get rid of noise pollution, but still, we can keep making small improvements.

Bibliography

Naik, Abhijit. "Noise Pollution Facts." Buzzle Web Portal: Intelligent Life on the Web. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. <http://www.buzzle.com/articles/noise-pollution-facts.html>.

"Noise." World Health Organization. World Health Organization. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. <http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-do/health-topics/environmental-health/noise>.

Stop Boom Car Noise, Motorcycle Noise, Car Alarm Noise, Barking Dog Noise, Neighbor Noise. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. <http://www.noisefree.org/>.

"BBC NEWS | Health | Road Noise Link to Blood Pressure." BBC News - Home. 10 Sept. 2009. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8247217.stm>.

Tuning Fork Lab

Guiding Question: How does the density of a material affect the properties of sound traveling from a tuning fork? 

Hypothesis: I think that the density of the material will have a large effect on the properties of the sound. I think that the pitch and loudness will be the biggest factors that change.  When the density of the object is higher I think it will be much quieter and the pitch will be much lower. When the object is less dense than the loudness will be much louder and the pitch will be higher.



Procedure:

1. Get a Tuning fork
2. Hit the tuning fork on an object then put the bas of the tuning fork on the object and put your ear to the material. Record how it sounds.
3. Repeat step 2 with 4 other materials
4. Find the densities of all the objects

Controlled Variable: 256 C, same temperature, hard hit

Material	Sound	Density
Desk (Oak)	High pitch, quiet, short	0.65 g/cm3
Wall (Concrete)	Almost no sound	1.1 g/cm3
Metal Rail (Aluminum)	High sound, long	2.7 g/cm3
White Board (Aluminum)	High, Very long	2.7 g/cm3
Wooden Box (Oak)	Low, Buzzing	0.65 g/cm3
Locker (Steel)	Loud, High, screeching	7.859 g/cm3

Conclusion:
This lab was very interesting and I think the most fun in the whole year. The tuning forks were very fun to listen to and the different frequencies made it so much more interesting. The sounds on the different materials were all different so steel didn’t sound like wood and glass didn’t sound like concrete. I think that our tests were accurate because we always hit the tuning fork the same way and had it the right distance away from our ears. The sounds were also very varied which made it interesting to see what the different sounds were. I think the most intense sound was the wooden box because it was made to project sound of the tuning fork. My hypothesis was mostly correct although I was surprised to see that concrete was less dense than aluminum. Even though the wall was less dense than the metal railing the concrete wall made almost no sound which surprised me when I saw the densities.

Further Inquiry:
This lab was very interesting to me and taught me a lot about the way sound travels and also the density of some materials. It was fun to see how the distance that your ear was from the object affected the sound and also to hear the different frequencies although we didn’t use them in our test. When we tried the metal railing it was interesting because I tried going very far away from where the tuning fork was and the sound was still very clear. It was strange to me when I heard that sound travelled slower through air than other materials so it was cool to hear it in reality. The sound would usually be very bad when it went through air but if you put your ear to it it would be very clear. This was my favorite lab this year and I hope that we will have more like this one.


Bibliography:


Wolfram Alpha. "Density of Oak - Wolfram|Alpha." Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine. Web. 24 Mar. 2011. <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Density of oak>.


Wolfram Alpha. "Density of Concrete." Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine. Web. 24 Mar. 2011. <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Density+of+Concrete>.


Wolfram Alpha. "Density of Aluminum - Wolfram|Alpha." Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine. Web. 24 Mar. 2011. <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Density of Aluminum>.


Wolfram Alpha. "Density of Steel - Wolfram|Alpha." Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine. Web. 24 Mar. 2011. <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Density of Steel>.

Japan Tsunami Current Event

At exactly 2:46 PM on Friday, March 11th 2011 a 9.0 earthquake hit just off the shore of Tōhoku, Japan. The earthquake has had devastating results on the Japanese people and has killed more than 9000 people. The tsunami has destroyed most of Japan's wast coast and has traveled very far inland. Tons of cities have been completely destroyed with results of leaving people homeless or, in many cases, dead. One of the other devastating results of this has been the nuclear reactor that could have had very bad results if it had not been treated. The nuclear reactor melted down and was close to being worse than Chernobyl. Since the earthquake has happened thousands upon thousands of people have been dead or injured. You can help save the people of Japan by donating to Convoy of Hope or many other organizations. 


Here is a video I found showing the tsunami:

Bill Nye- Sound notes

• Sound is tiny vibrations in the air
• Oscilloscope- makes sound waves visible
• The ear is like a funnel that helps sound go into the eardrums
• Sound travels faster through metal and brick faster than through air
• Sound travels 18 times faster through metal than air
• An echo happens when sound bounces off something
• When sound enters the ear canal it becomes smaller
• Higher frequency = Higher pitch
• Lower frequency = Lower pitch

Properties of Sound Lab

I. Guiding Question: Determine how changing amplitude and frequency can change how a sound is perceived.

II. Hypothesis: I think that when the rubber band is plucked the amplitude and frequency will change the sound a lot. When the amplitude becomes higher then I think the sound will be much deeper and maybe even more muffled because of the vibrations and the top of the rubber band hitting the bottom. When the amplitude is lower I think the pitch will be much higher but the sound will also be quieter.

III. Exploration:
Materials:
thin, thick, long, and small rubber bands, partner

Procedure:
     1.
Have 2 partners each hold one end of the thicker rubber band, pull until the rubber band is not loose.
2. Pull the rubber band 1 cm away from the middle. Let it go. How far does the band move? (1 cm) Describe the sound you hear in the table below.
3. Repeat step 2 four more times. Each time, pull the band back further. Describe how the sound changes each time in the chart below.

IV. Record & Analyze:

Experiment 1:

Distance Away from Middle	Description of Sound
1 cm	Low, quite pitch
2 cm	Higher, louder
3 cm	high pitch, very quiet
4 cm	low pitch, very quiet
5 cm	short, low pitch

Thickness of Rubber Band	Description of Sound
Thick	low pitch
Thin	quiet, high pitch

Tightness of Rubber Band	Description of Sound
Loose	almost no sound
Tight	high pitch
Tightest	louder high pitch

Length of Rubber Band	Description of Sound
Longest	Low pitch
Long	short low pitch
Short	quit high pitched

    
V. Conclusion:
1. How did the sound change when you changed the amplitude?
When I changed the amplitude it became a higher pitch up to a certain point where the vibrations would hit the bottom of the rubber band and completely stop the sound.
2. What happened when you changed the thickness, length, and tightness of the rubber band?
The thickness of the rubber band changed mostly the pitch, making it very much lower. When the length was shorter it would be a higher pitch but a shorter sound. When it was longer it would be a lower pitch and last much longer. The tighter the rubber band was the higehr the pitch would be.

h 

Earthquake Safety Plan

Safety Plan

If there is an earthquake:

To Survive:

1. Get away from any large windows, shelves, or other glass objects.
2. Hide under the nearest doorway or table using the drop, cover, and hold technique. 
3. Attempt to phone for help if the building collapsed
4. If it didn't, make your way out of the building after the initial earthquake and find an open area.

To Escape:

1. Get away from any large windows, shelves, or other glass objects.
2. Leave the house from the nearest exit.

Earthquake Safety Kit

• First aid kit including bandages, cotton balls, rubbing alcohol etc.
• Whistle to call for help if somebody is badly injured
• Canned food and a can opener
• Water, approximately 3 gallons for every family member
• Extra clothes, including waterproof clothes
• Radio
• Flashlight
• Extra Money