Another question i cant find the answer to,

[rusty JEDI]

When you are at a sellout game and your team wins in overtime the place erupts. The noise level from screaming and whistling is amazingly loud.

How come the scream of all the people combined is louder than the scream of the loudest single screamer in the building?

Thanks

rJ

[codewarrior]

Why is the light from 100,000 candles brighter than the brightest of the 100,000? Same reason.

[Reef]

the law of quantity vs. quality

[heavybody]

This is just a guess, but I think the quantity of air being moved is why the many are louder, after all sound is vibrating air so all those voices are moving a far greater quantity of air . Other than that I have no idea.

heavily bodied

[BusterStacks]

Plus the frequency spectrum is a lot larger with a ton of people.

[MelchyBeau]

In order for it to be louder, the amplitude must increase. what happens is that there is alot of wave construction going on in this area. I.E. there is alot more air being pushed.

The frequencies don't acutally matter all that much. those peaks are being added up as well.

Its all about pushing air. The more air pushed, the louder it gets.

Melch

[Lazymeatball]

This kind of reminds me of all those silly movies where one guy is being chased by a huge group of people (ie. PCU). It looks like he is in bad shape, but in reality he only has to run faster than the fastest person in the group. Of course with a larger sample size there is more likely to be a few really fast runners assuming a bell curve distribution. Furthermore, what's the inspiration for the slower people in the mob to continue their pursuit? Is it to hopefully get a few kicks in after the faster people have already tackled the guy?