Title and Abstract

Investigation of the soundproof of material

Abstract

Sound is a heard when particles move and vibrate our eardrums. The kinetic energy of the sound particles can be lost as heat energy faster when there is solid matter in the way of the moving particles. However, sound can be too loud or unnecessary, which can misophonia or affect experiments. So, if we can measure the amount of sound that is not lost after travelling through the material, this can be used to find how soundproof a material is it, can be implemented for construction sites, preventing sound from disturbing others and also be used for science experiments where surrounding sound needs to be constant like when trying to measure the speed of sound. In this experiment, we want to find out the soundproof ability of materials and which one is the most soundproof. We tested six different types of materials (Wood, Aluminium, Paper, Cotton Cloth, Cardboard, Styrofoam) in hope to find which material will have the most amount of sound lost when it passes through the material, indicating the most soundproof most material. We hypothesise that styrofoam is the most soundproof material. Our independent variable is the difference in materials, which are styrofoam, wood, cardboard, cotton cloth, paper and aluminium foil. Our dependent variable is the amount of sound that is detected by our decibel sensor. From our results, we find out that the most soundproof materials are both wood and cardboard both with the lowest average decibels detected, of 49.98 decibels (dB), detected by the decibel sensor when the materials were in between the sound source and the decibel sensor while our hypothesis, styrofoam, had an average reading of 62.54 dB. But, cardboard had the lowest amount of decibels detected in our readings, 49.5 dB.