Theory 39/Building Physics
Privacy Is a Mass Ratio
The claim
Acoustic privacy between dwellings is set by the ratio of partition mass to background noise level rather than by partition mass alone.
01Mechanism
Speech becomes intelligible when it exceeds background by a margin; a heavier partition lowers transmission while a higher background masks what remains.
02Predictions
- P1Privacy should track the ratio.
- P2Partition mass alone should mispredict.
03Refutation
Privacy tracking mass would remove the background term.