[plug] Hot and bothered CPU hankers for cool breeze

[Cameron Patrick]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2003 at 08:40:54PM +0800, Derek Fountain wrote:

| D'you know, I never really thought about it, but now that I do, it wasn't that 
| noisy. I mean there was a constant drone, and the people who originally had 
| their desks in the same room were all moved out as the number of boxes grew, 
| but I'd work in there for hours at a time with no ill effects. In fact, you 
| could to talk to someone with a normal conversation voice, without yelling or 
| anything.
| 
| I'm intrigued! Why do 400 boxes not sound 400 times louder than 1 box?

The laws of Physics and the design of our ears.  My understanding is
that a 10dB increase corresponds to ~2x louder, s 400 boxes should sound about
$2^{\log_{10} 400} \approx 6$ times louder than one.

Cameron.