See Also: Diop, Birago Ismael(encyclopedia)
decibel(medicine)
decibel(dictionary)
decibel (dB)(encyclopedia)
decibel(dictionary)

Diop, Birago Ismael (sh) and decibel (dB) (sh)


Diop, Birago Ismael (sh)




born Dec. 11, 1906, Dakar, French West Africa
died Nov. 25, 1989, Dakar

Senegalese poet and recorder of traditional Wolof folktales.

A veterinarian and diplomat, he was active in the Negritude movement in the 1930s. His output of lyric poetry is small but the poetry is beautifully composed. His books containing tales told to him by his family's griot include Tales of Amadou Koumba (1947) and Tales and Commentaries (1963).


decibel (dB) (sh)




Unit for measuring the relative intensities of sounds or the relative amounts of acoustic or electric power.

Because it requires about a tenfold increase in power for a sound to register twice as loud to the human ear, a logarithmic scale is useful for comparing sound intensity. Thus, the threshold of human hearing (absolute silence) is assigned the value of 0 dB and each increase of 10 dB corresponds to a tenfold increase in intensity and a doubling in loudness. The "threshold of pain" for intensity varies from 120 to 130 dB among different individuals. A related unit is the bel = 10dB.