Location:

This balloon pop was taken October 31st, 2018, at 5pm. The location, Lyon Court stairwell, consists of brick and cement walls, with two linoleum covered stairways converging in a triangle at a carpeted landing, which then bifurcates into two similarly carpeted hallways. The ceiling stands approximately 7m above the bottom stair, and the stairway itself is only approximately 1.5m wide. Only one of the outer wooden doors was closed at the time of recording.

Acoustic Data:

Maximum: 87.44dB

Time to drop 30dB: 0.5s

Time to drop 60dB: 3.98s (Only dropped 58dB)

Minimum: 29.4dB

Recording Process:

Blew up balloon to a radius of ~.25m. Balloon was held about a meter from the ground, and 0.6m from the TASCAM recorder. Key was used at first but to no avail, scissors were used after to successfully pop the balloon. The sound was collected from the bottom of the east stairwell.

Acoustic Analysis:

The longer reverberation time can be explained by the large amount of vertical open space as well as the narrowness of the stairs. Additionally, the hard linoleum finish on the stairs and the brick and cement walls could have added to the amount of reverberation, and consequent 30dB drop time. The graphs above show that the sound does not totally drop 60dB, which may be understood by the fact that a residence hall such as Lyon is subject to background noise, and the hallways above the landing could have continued to propagate the sound wave.  

by Thummim Mekuria and Daven Crossland