h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You can do a little experiment to do with the way your ear attenuates sound.
While you are driving along in your car, slowly turn up your radio till it becomes loud. Leave it for a while then turn it up a little more. Keep doing this as you drive along turning it up a little at a time. When you stop, turn off the radio but don’t touch the volume. When you get back in the car and turn the radio on it will seem incredibly loud where as when you were driving along it just seemed loud.

The reason being is that you ear has effectively turned the radio down in your head or attenuated the sound. When you get back in the car your ear hasn’t had time to do this so the radio will seem very load.

It works the same in reverse. People say that noise travels further at night, this is because that background noise of every day life has dropped and your ear has “turned up the volume” in your head. This makes your ear more sensitive to noise and therefore you can hear sounds that during the day with all the other noise around you didn’t.

Just thought I would share that with you all

Stig