The Effect of Arrangement of Cubicles, Density of Foam, and Distance from Sound on the Sound Level of an Individual Cubicle
The problem of this experiment was to determine the best combination of foam density (high and low), cubicle arrangements, and speaker distance that would minimize residual sound the most. This experiment was conducted due to many negative effects that sound has on daily lives. Specifically in offices, most sounds come from machines or people, which can negatively affect how people work while performing tasks. For this research, different arrangements were made and each position had their sound level (dB) tested. Additionally, arrangements were each made with high and low density foam that were tested to find out which one had the greatest impact on the sound level. Furthermore, an audio file resembling an office workplace was used to simulate a real work-environment for each trial conducted.
After analyzing the boxplots between each density and arrangement, a two-sample t test was conducted between the low density far and low density middle placements. It was hypothesized that the low density foam, with the combined arrangement of cubicles and the farthest distance from the sound, would achieve the lowest level of residual sound. However, this was partially wrong due to the individual arrangement achieving the lowest sound level, which can be seen with the p-value of 0.001043, meaning the null hypothesis, that both placements would have the same sound level, was rejected at an alpha level of 0.05. Furthermore, there is evidence to support that the low density foam, with far distance from sound source, yielded a lower sound level than the low density foam, middle distance.
Research Conducted By:
Timothy Kemp
Cousino High School
Scott Zanichelli
Cousino High School
Warren Consolidated Schools