Experiment Essay Sample: Noise in School

Introduction

As a student switching from classroom to classroom the way I study and perform in each classroom is extremely different.  A huge reason is because of background or environmental noise in school.  While studying the little noises were always distracting and the louder the noises got the more annoying it become and harder to concentrate on the task.  In this experiment, I hope to learn how loud the little noises are and how they can distract people from studying and focusing on other activities such as working, sleeping, or having a conversation with someone.  The question is which environmental noise, that happens daily is the noisest/loudest of the three?  In this experiment, I will use three everyday distractions, an open window, a phone call, and papers rustling.  With these three distractions, a sound meter will calculate the averages and determine which sound is the noisest and the most distractive.

Method

In this Everyday Science of Hearing experiment, my method was to use different materials to create sound and see how loud it could be.  For my first control, I put my phone on my desk in an 80 square feet bedroom.  Then lifted the blinds and opened the only window in the room and it is facing west near the 1st. Ave road in Tucson, AZ.  I opened the app on my phone and started to take my first measurement.  For my first measurement when I started I waited for 10 seconds before I stopped the recording.  I continued this procedure two more times and after each trial, I recorded it on a table.  For my second control, I used “The Simplified Planner” by Emily Ley; it is 9 inches in length and 11 inches in height.  With this planner, I was turning the pages, paper, and cover for 10 seconds, three times.  For my third control, I was on a phone call with a male who has a softer deep voice.  While he was talking I recorded the measurement from the same device as the call ( my cell phone).  Again measured for 10 seconds three times.  To get these measurements I went to the Google Play Store for Android and found “Sound Meter” by the developer ABC Apps.  In the diagram below you will see the format and the dimensions of the room that the experiment was being held in.  

Results

The three materials in the experiment were an opened window, a phone call, ad rustled some papers.  In this experiment, the setting was all the same besides the materials that were being used.  The bedroom door was closed and one-half of my closet was open on the left side of the desk where the measuring was being taken (figure 1.1).  Although when the window was open it brought in multiple sounds that were at different volumes, unlike the materials that were truly in my control.  Also when the window was open it was rush hour traffic and it was a windy night as well.  Surprisingly the open window was louder than the phone call by 16.77 dB (figure 1.2).  The papers rustling had the biggest change from trial 1 to trial 2.  That could have happened due to distance, how the papers were rustled, and how many papers were being rustled at the same time.

Conclusion and Discussion

Everyday science of hearing experiment is to figure out the level of noise everyday materials cause.  Put of the three materials the loudest noise level of the three materials was the noise level of the open window.  The open window was the loudest overall in all three trials (figure 1.3).  These findings disproved the original hypothesis because the phone call was the second loudest in the experiment.  It is extremely shocking that the phone call got second place because the distributor of the noise (cell phone) was also the collector and measurer.  There was no distance between transmitting the sound that would cause the sound to be faint.  Some possible sources of error are that the paper rustling wasn’t consistent in trial #1 and in trial #2.  Another possible source of error was that the open window was at a different time than the other two which could cause overall environmental noise.  In the future, I would conduct all three experiments at the same time and also use a different material than paper rustling.  I would also measure the ringing of the cell phone when calling someone rather than having a conversation with someone that way it is more consistent. 

This project is extremely important in learning and hearing health for everyone especially people with hearing difficulties.  It is the most important when you are in a school setting no matter what age the person is if there is a noise it draws people’s attention to it causes disruptive learning.   In 2020 there was a study done by Jessica Massonie and her team studied the difference between noise interference and noise annoyance in children.  In their study, they found that children who didn’t have any difficulties with hearing got annoyed whenever there was an activity that needed to be done but it was still very loud in the classroom.  In the study, it showed, “annoyance reactions contain an emotional component that goes beyond the fact that, on a cognitive level, noise causes difficulties with achieving on-going goals and tasks,” (Massonie).  This quote is a huge breakthrough in the study because, during ongoing goals, noise isn’t distracting them in a sense that it is taking all their attention from the tas but it causing annoyance and frustration in the kids.  Children with hearing difficulties had the opposite reaction to loud noise in the classroom.  In the study, they found when children with hearing difficulties hear loud noises it takes their attention away from the task more than it is annoying them (Massonie).  

Noise can also infect hearing health; meaning too much noise can cause hearing damage.  Noise can be highly dangerous if people are not careful, according to ASHA, “Sounds at 85 dBA can lead to hearing loss if you listen to them for more than 8 hours at a time”  (Gallun).  These sounds can commonly come from concerts, loud classrooms, restaurants, earbuds, etc.This is important because many sounds in everyday life can cause serious damage over a long period of time.  Depending on the life style or job someone has noise-induced hearing loss can be faster or slower than other people.  For example, a librarian works in a low noised-induced environment while someone who is a drummer works at an extremely dangerous amount of noise-induced enviroment.  In conculsion, the relavance and importantce of this project was to show that noise can affect a person’s hearing over time and that noise can be extremely distracting and annoying in the learning setting.  Being able to recoginze when when something is loud and turning it down or off will be a life changer when it comes to potential hearing loss.  When it comes to noise in the classroom it is important when to lower the volume in the enclosed area to allow people to be more focused and not to have the extra annoyance or stress.