- #1
Jiggy-Ninja
- 309
- 1
I didn't think it would be this hard to find the answer to this, but 1 hour of googling has come up with nothing that I can make sense of. The main cause of my confusion is that there's about a dozen different ways of measuring sound power in decibels with different units or reference powers, with some being based on source power and others being [itex]\frac{W}{m^{2}}[/itex] at some standard distance, and I can't figure out how to convert them!
The question I want answered is simple:
What is the RMS power, in Watts, of a whale song?
I was unable to find a straight answer for this no matter what queries I put in. Google seemed more interested in giving me pages about "the relaxing power of whale song", but I'm stunned at how hard it is to find a simple figure for something so basic.
I found some figures on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_vocalization
Arbitrarily, I chose the blue whale and took the high end of the range, 188 dB. The trouble is the units, listed at the top of the table, are "dB re 1 uPa (micropascal) at 1m (meter)".
So, this dB ratio is based on pascals at a specified distance. I want to convert this into straight power in watts, and do not know how. Can anyone help? Or even just point a link to some place with a simple answer.
The question I want answered is simple:
What is the RMS power, in Watts, of a whale song?
I was unable to find a straight answer for this no matter what queries I put in. Google seemed more interested in giving me pages about "the relaxing power of whale song", but I'm stunned at how hard it is to find a simple figure for something so basic.
I found some figures on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_vocalization
Arbitrarily, I chose the blue whale and took the high end of the range, 188 dB. The trouble is the units, listed at the top of the table, are "dB re 1 uPa (micropascal) at 1m (meter)".
So, this dB ratio is based on pascals at a specified distance. I want to convert this into straight power in watts, and do not know how. Can anyone help? Or even just point a link to some place with a simple answer.