Because the human ear is so sensitive to sounds, it can detect very small intensities.  The lower intensity that a human can hear (which is represented with the symbol I 0) is about 1x10-12 W/m2. However, a loud music venue may have sounds that are near 1.0 W/m2 (though sound as this intensity would cause permanent damage to your ears).  Because the human ear can detect frequencies over such a large range of intensities, more often a sound intensity level is used.  This level is defined as: β = 10 ⋅ log 10 I I 0 and the unit is dB which stands for deci-bels (or just decibels).  If a person speaks with an intensity of 2.443 μW/m2, what is the sound intensity level in decibels?

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Because the human ear is so sensitive to sounds, it can detect very small intensities.  The lower intensity that a human can hear (which is represented with the symbol I 0) is about 1x10-12 W/m2. However, a loud music venue may have sounds that are near 1.0 W/m(though sound as this intensity would cause permanent damage to your ears).  Because the human ear can detect frequencies over such a large range of intensities, more often a sound intensity level is used.  This level is defined as:

β = 10 ⋅ log 10 I I 0

and the unit is dB which stands for deci-bels (or just decibels).  If a person speaks with an intensity of 2.443 μW/m2, what is the sound intensity level in decibels?

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Given intensity I=2.443 μW/m2I=2.443×10-6 W/m2And standard intensity level, Io=10-12 W/m2

Intensity level is given by the formulaβ=10log10IIo

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