This was an empty parking lot next to Pendleton and behind Frank and Blaisdell. Here, there weren’t any cars, trees, or anything around within a hundred feet that would have allowed the sound to bounce back. However, it is probably worth mentioning there was a lot of wind at this time, and it was super cold. Looking back at the recording, there are also some bird chirps that are audible, but they do not seem to cause a big change in the spectrograph.
After the pop of the balloon, the intensity of the sound was 91.43 decibels. The drop of 30 dB seems to happen quickly at 0.08 seconds, and the 50 dB decay happens at around 0.5 seconds after the pop. For this balloon pop, it was uniquely weird to find a minimum intensity level because the decibel measurement of the environment before the balloon pop was much lower than the decibel level after.
Compared to some of the other balloon pops, this one seemed short and sharp with minimal reverb. This is also shown in the spectrograph, where you can see that the decay is very rapid after the pop. There is an interesting increase in activity at around 0.1 seconds after the balloon pop, which I am not exactly sure what it is.
We used a Fifine microphone provided by the music library of Pomona College in Thatcher Hall. This mic was connected to a laptop with QuickTime Player.
