You will prepare and submit a term paper on Sound Absorption. Your paper should be a minimum of 1250 words in length. Following is the diagram that is showing the concept of the absorption coefficient.

It is a common phenomenon that when sound interacts with any kind of surface, it usually or most of the time lose some quantity of its amplitude unless it is an ideal situation. The analogy of a mechanical object experiencing friction when moving along a surface is a good example and in a similar manner, the sound also loses some strength when coming in contact with a surface(Miyasaki, 1999, p.23).

The absorption coefficient depends on the frequency of the sound wave and the overall interaction of the two mediums. We can generally use a table representing the various values of absorption coefficients of different surfaces in order to calculate the reverberation times with the allocated Sabine Formula( Leighton, Brown, 2002, p.36).

The Sabine Formula is a way to reasonably work out the reverberation times in the comparatively large places like the auditoriums and other similar places. If one needs the more accurate approximation for the respectively selected enclosures, than the average overall absorption coefficient is calculated as:

As the common observation speaks, distributing the panels evenly while accommodating more space of the same area leads to the fact that the sound waves will not encounter a large surface area of obstruction which will lead to more absorption and the resultant waves that reach the other side will be of much lower strength. Similar will be the effect on the reverberation times accordingly.

According to the calculated results, the kitchen extract fan is creating more sound than the kitchen supply fan.