Ultimate Sound Pressure Level Decibel Table
"Exactly how loud is a rocket take off" is what I had googled when I was led to this brilliant page. It scientifically lists real world examples of the quietest things, to the loudest things on earth, in amazing detail (some 150+ examples). They are in decibel (dB) order, (dB SPL to be specific) and range from way below our hearing, to way above what would instantly pulverize our puny bodies.
Here are some of my favorites:
-80db: underwater nuclear submarine microphones listening to shrimp chewing on food at 100 meters distance
30db: totally quiet nightime in desert-impossible anywhere near city
128db: human, loudest scream measured at a distance of 8 feet 2 inches
128db: human head hair begins to detect vibration
135db: human, a slight cooling effect begins to be noticed, from air expansion
150db: rock concert “the who” two 10 story stacks = 144 double refridgerator sized speakers, actual level reached 120 db at a distance of 32 meters for this normalized reading of 150 db. continous level 114-118db (p) at 32 meters
156db: in a mini-van with twenty 12” woofers and 19,000 watts of amplifier power. each speakers is displacing (pumping back and forth ) 0.75 inches (if long hair women sit in it, her hair will fly out of window with bass)
153-163db: n.h.r.a. dragsters- 5000 to 7000 horsepower, liquid nitroglycerin fuel, earthshaking at 50 feet, humans find it hard to see, and breathe
220db: Saturn 5 rocketship, melts concrete and burns grass one mile away reached a velocity of 5 miles per second and moon on July 20, 1969
243db: Largest non-nuclear explosion ever, 1947 destruction of Nazi u-boat pens used 7100 tons of explosive
282db: Nuclear bomb, 57 megatons hydrogen largest ever detonated, 1961 shock waves circled the earth 3 times, first orbit took 36 hr 27 min.
320db: Volcano eruption, Tambora Indonesia,1815, ejected 36 cubic miles.approximately equal to 14,000 megaton nuclear bombs or a 14 gigaton bomb based on ejected volume,change in megatons times 1.345 equals volume ejected change.if was a nuclear bomb it would create a crater about 12.4 miles wide and 1.33 miles deep.internal pressure is believed to be about 47 million p.s.i. = 347 db
Some wild stuff... Much more amazing detail on the actual site (click the title of this post, or here). Credit for site: William Hamby 2004
