In 1895, Harvard University opened the Fogg Art Museum, but its lecture hall was a disaster; speakers' voices bounced off the semicircular plaster walls, creating a chaotic echo that rendered lectures completely unintelligible. The university turned to a young physics assistant professor, Wallace Sabine, to solve the problem. Sabine painstakingly tracked the sound decay in the room, using a pipe organ and a stopwatch to measure the time it took for sound to become inaudible. He discovered that the duration of the reverberation was directly proportional to the room's volume and inversely proportional to the sound-absorbing qualities of its surfaces. [X] Ultimately, this breakthrough allowed him to calculate the exact amount of felt padding needed to absorb the excess sound, founding the modern science of architectural acoustics.
Given that all the choices are true, which one transitions most effectively from the discovery of the mathematical relationship to the practical application of it, while emphasizing the arduous nature of Sabine's experimentation?
- AHe carried hundreds of heavy theater cushions into the hall by hand, this exhausting labor allowed him to verify his mathematical calculations.
- To test this formula, he spent countless late-night hours moving hundreds of hair-felt cushions from a nearby theater into the lecture hall to measure their absorption properties.Answer
- CHis formula, which defined reverberation time, became a cornerstone of acoustic design, showing how materials like felt could absorb sound waves.
- DThe hair-felt cushions, that he carried from the nearby Sanders Theatre, provided the physical data he needed to confirm his theory.