“Student Section Before 2010 Season”
“Student Section After 2010 Season”
As most of us know the football student section at our beloved Penn State University can get pretty noisy on game day. Most of us decide to show up for the games as our 21,000 seat student section is almost always sold out, and if you don’t believe me look at everyone’s sunburn today for proof that we were there. But what some of you casual Penn State supporters may not know is that there is an incredible amount of science that goes into making our student section as loud as possible. Prior to the 2010 football season, the student section was slightly to the left of the end zone and in a different location than it is today. Most of us don’t recall this because we weren’t Penn State students at the time, but this change in area seating was made for a very specific scientific reason.
Penn State grad student Andrew Barnard used 11 sound meters to record crowd noise at three home games: What he found: that when opposing teams had the ball, the noise level in the stadium hit 110 decibels—50 times the volume as when Penn State was on offense. Not surprising on its own, but the info enabled Barnard to find the spot where the raucous student section could be most effective: When the stadium was empty, he searched for the best spots for an audible assault by carrying a noisy speaker around to 45 different seats and measuring how loud it sounded on the field… For seats on the sidelines, closer was better. “Students sitting in the highest rows contributed very little to the overall sound. But the situation was reversed behind the end zone. Higher seats could be heard better than field-level seats because of a trick of the stadium’s architecture”, said Barnard.
The move is expected to cut the range of a quarterback’s voice by an additional six inches, meaning more false starts, more penalties, and more opportunities for the Nittany Lions.
http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/12290/penn-state-to-pump-up-the-volume-in-2011
This is a great post. I thought I had noticed a change in the student section that what I had seen in TV in years past. Good to know the reason now! Very interesting also the science aspect that went into making the student section as effective as possible, I would like to meet those who discovered this innovation. Now Ill have something to think about every time Im cheering in the stands. We Are!
What a cool blog! I bet most of the students here have no idea about this. Last year, the fans in the Seattle Seahawks stadium at CenturyLink field broke the guinness world record by reaching 136.6 decibels! This article explains that yes the fans were extremely loud, but the architecture of the stadium helps pump up the volume. There are canopies that cover 70% of the seats that plays a role in making the fans sound louder. I say Penn State students give the Seahawks fans a run for their money and break their record!
This is so interesting. I had no idea they changed the section like that, but I of course know how loud we are and I can see how that would be affected by the architecture. I was wondering if other stadiums were built in special ways for the reason of carrying sound, and I found that many of them are. This article from TIME discusses how the Seattle Seahawks had their stadium built with two huge canopies so that sound was carried even better.
I went to my first PSU football game on Saturday and it was amazing. The student section was cheering the entire time. Everyone had so much spirit and energy even though we were playing a team that we knew we would win. When sitting in the student section I did notice that it was incredibly loud and I loved every second of it! I didn’t realize that they did this on purpose though, I just figured the students were loud because our voices carried throughout the field. Awesome blog idea!