Sound Physics: What Is The Difference Between Sound and Noise

Imagine studying in a room while someone's dog is barking, or someone is listening to loud music. This makes it quite difficult for you to concentrate. After some time, you will get irritated and think of the sound of barking as noise. All this can be really annoying, and it is where the difference between sound and noise starts. In physics, sound is considered as a mechanical wave that arises from the vibrating particles traveling through a medium like water or air. The air particles' back and forth motion creates sound waves. As the vibration of air particles moves through a medium, it creates higher and lower levels of pressure via decompression and compression. These vibrations result in the creation of several sound forms.

Meanwhile, noise is considered as sound's subset, which is obnoxious and undesirable. It is defined as several sound versions that are unwanted and unclearly heard due to the jarring and loud nature. You cannot decrease or increase noise, and it is present everywhere. It is a loud sound that is quite unpleasant to listen to. Certain examples are yells, screeches, shouts, thumps, clatter, and honks. It is differentiated due to the harmful effects that happen to people's health if it exceeds a particular level.

What Sound Levels are Safe?

Sound levels within 85 dB or decibels are considered as safe. But the sound level that is 85dB or above is quite dangerous. The louder sound is heard, the more permanent damage it can cause to the human ears. For instance, if you are listening to music at just 85dB for around 8 hours, your ears will have permanent damage. However, if you listen to music at 100 dB, then the damage can happen in just 15 minutes.

You may wonder the reason for danger rising with the increase in decibels numbers. When levels of sound increase by 10 dB, the sound pressure increases ten-fold. But the human brain could not adjust to the things it is hearing. So, one will hear loud sound twice. Sounds can damage even without becoming uncomfortably loud. Many people find that sounds within the 60-65 dB range quite uncomfortable. Moreover, the ideal sound level inside a classroom is believed to remain at or lower than 35 dB.

Some Damaging Noise Effects That Can Happen

Noise does not have to be a lot louder to have some critical effect on health. For instance, squeaky doors are not loud during opening or closing, but it is obnoxious and annoying. Certain damaging effects of noise include:

• You can feel a lot more stressed out than usual.
• Your heart seems to beat faster than normal.
• Sweating becomes more and more by hearing the noise.
• You may become unable to have a good sleep.
• Noise can get you annoyed and angry even by the little things.
• It is possible that your anxiety increases, and you may also feel uneasy.

In certain cases, people hearing loud noises can end up with hearing loss, cardiovascular disorders, faster palpitation, and hypertension. Sometimes, loud noise can lead to psychological effects like irritation, anxiety disorder, panic attacks, nervousness, memory loss, and inattentiveness.

Certain Key Differences Between Noise and Sound

Sound and noise both are distinct words that people often interchangeably use. Sound is vibrations of air particles that the auditory faculties receive, and noise is an undesirable sound. Here are certain basic differences between them.

1. Unpleasant elements

Noise has many unpleasant elements, whereas sound does not make you feel any sort of unpleasantness. You will find your favorite music as pleasant, and the same happens when you hear appreciation from your teacher or any soothing voice that you like. But the honk of vehicles, or a shout, explosion noise, all can be quite unpleasant to you.

2. Desirability

Noise is something that is undesired and unwanted, but that is not the same with sound. Melodious sounds can be pleasant, but you will not appreciate the yelling at institutes. This makes noise quite undesirable compared to sound.

3. Relevance

The sound seems relevant, but noise can never be relevant. The air particles' vibrations with regular variations create sound, but extremely irregular variations in particles make noise.

4. Effects on Human Health

Unlike noise, the sound is not that harmful to health. Loud noise results in cardiovascular disorders, heart attacks, hearing loss, irritations, anxiety, nervousness, and many more. But sound does not have all these harmful effects.

5. Connotation

Sound has a very positive connotation, but the noise has a negative one. When one hears a sound, it means that the person heard something audible, relevant, definitive, and distinctive. When one hears a loud noise, it means something incomprehensible and irrelevant is heard. People react differently to noise and sound.

6. Utility

Noise is quite useless, but the sound has utility. Sound is used in many fields like sonography, filmmaking, ultrasound, radiology, etc.

Conclusion

After reading all the above things, you can definitely get an idea about the difference between noise and sound. In fact, both noise and sound have a very thin line between them.