Students Explore Decibels and How to Use Them

For the last month, Aidan’s Precalc With Data and Modeling students have been focused on the mechanics of logarithms and using them to examine sound.

"When using real data the numbers tend to be less friendly than in made up problems. Some students need some time to adapt to the increased precision and confidence in calculations needed to analyze real measurements," Aidan noted.

The project requires students to perform similar calculations repeatedly to see how sound intensity changes. This is where Aidan sees the "rules" of math actually click. Instead of seeing each problem as a brand-new hurdle, students start using the logarithmic properties they learned in class to streamline their work."I love seeing students find patterns in the data and shortcuts in their calculations! As they have to do a similar calculation multiple times, most find some aspect of the formula that they can condense using the tools we talked about in class," he shared.

Why the Application Matters

The goal of this project in a math curriculum isn't just to teach about sound—it is to prevent the math from becoming a meaningless list of steps. By applying logarithms to something tangible like a decibel scale, the students see the "why" behind the functions they've been manipulating.

"The math these students are doing often gets quite abstract, it can be easy to get wrapped up in a set of rules and forget that we are modeling real properties of the world using these numbers and functions," Aidan noted about the importance of this connection.

By the end of the project, the students aren't just doing "math for math's sake." They are using the logarithmic tools they've built over the last month to understand a physical phenomenon they experience every day.