My subject is stadium design, and, based on acoustics, I don't know anything except I'm amazed how it can stand such sound and noise without you feeling it in your body.

 

 

This animation is focussing on the acoustics of stadium design and not how a stadium looks.

Sound can bounce back and forth in most stadiums like in this game of pong. The sound waves will eventually lose energy but there are a few simple things that can be done to reduce the sound which bounces around.

Parallel surfaces are part of the problem so using different angles will help stop the sound from going back and forth.

Soft surfaces will absorb much of the sound energy.

This pong visualisation is good for showing where the sound moves but the air itself doesn’t actually move around as that would be wind.

Sound waves travel by air molecules vibrating and passing these vibrations on.

Newton’s cradle is a better example of how sound waves travel.  It shows how energy is transferred through a substance without that substance having to change its position.

When most people are thinking or they are designing a stadium, generally they’re thinking about their view that the spectator gets, not really how it sounds.

I made a bit of a mistake when it showed the, the ball losing energy and it just went straight to the ground.  Because I really should have shown it shrinking away because air, if it has no sound, doesn’t just fall to the ground.

I think the "Pong" visualisation was a bit of a breakthrough for me.  It enabled me to understand the subject much more than I did before.  I think that was just because I was watching something happening.

The "Newton’s cradle" was a breakthrough because it made much more sense and I understood what I was doing.