Zhang Quan, 70, of Chongqing city can clap his hands almost as loud as the sound of helicopter blades.

Recently his clapping was measured by local environmental protection officials as reaching 107 decibels. This is only slightly less loud than the 110 decibels reached by a helicopter.

“When I am clapping, even my own ears feels painful, no mentioning of others. That’s why I usually don’t clap,” says Zhang.

He has been lucky that he has not been arrested for noise pollution as the officials from the environmental agency say that his clapping violates noise code levels. They advised him not to clap too often.

http://www.weirdasianews.com/2007/07/22 ... elicopter/

I bet he caused that recent earthquake in China.

107dB is not "slightly less" than 110dB. It's actually half as much.

Nice try, though.

How does this work? Can you explain? I'm genuinely curious, coz the numbers don't make sense.

It's a logarithmic function.

It's the base-10 logarithmic function performed on a ratio and multiplied by a factor of 10.

10^2 = 100, so a ratio of 100 is 20dB, for example.
It just so happens that 10^0.3 is about 2, so a ratio of 2 to 1 is 3dB. So if you increase by 3dB, the linear magnitude of your underlying value increase by a factor of 2. It doesn't matter of you go from 14 to 17db, or from 117 to 120. It's still a factor of two. If you actually put it in a spread sheet, you'll find that 10^11 / 10^10.7 = 10^0.3 = 1.995.

WUT?

Well, it is slightly less in decibels as a numerical value, if that was the angle they were going for. Misleading to people not familiar though.


Anyway, still an interesting little oddity, no?

but isn't 107dB clap still loud? anyway, i didn't know that about the vast differences in terms of how the function is set up. also, that sentence is challenging on the brain to some extent.

Don't get me wrong, 107dB is a very loud clap. It's half as loud as a helicopter. I just wouldn't call that almost as loud as a helicopter, and the journalist who wrote this obviously didn't know what decibels are.

And neither do I, despite that brain-melting mathetical nonsense you wrote above (14% on my final high school maths exam, and I still got into nursing!)

ugg

Occasionally I'll come across a post that makes my head explode, and I always know who it's from.

I don't even know how someone retains that kind of information.

On the other hand, hand claps generally fall well below the 60 dB range. I admit forgetting the average, or anything resembling it, but still.

Really? I'd think a normal person can clap in the 80-90dB range if they try. According to Wikipedia, a passenger car from 10m away is 60-80dB, and a good clap should be louder than that. A golf clap could easily be below 60dB though.

For a while the Guinness record for clapping was 73 dB.

Wikipedia's examples must be off then, because it doesn't seem like a loud clap would be quieter than a car at 10m. I suppose 70-80dB could easily be an overestimate for the car, though.

Also, it appears as if another Chinese guy broke the 73dB record a few years ago and clapped at 97dB.

so that's how the chinese plan to take over the world? by breaking clapping db records?


watch out world.

Why doesn't he just clap more softly?

he's either a very happy guy, or retarded