03-22-2015, 12:42 AM
(03-22-2015, 12:23 AM)aschem_imp Wrote: If noise is power wasted, then why are racing cars/motorcycles so loud?
Motorcycles are loud because some primitives, who IMHO didn't get enough attention when they were toddlers...like to compensate for it in the present. Notice I didn't say "as adults." The assumption, juvenile IMHO, is that because THEY like the noise, that I, in my bed at two in the morning, will ALSO appreciate that noise that so thoughtfully woke me up.
So they pull off the mufflers.
Racing cars are loud for the same reason - no mufflers. I doubt there would be any performance loss if a racing engine was engineered for some back-pressure; but obviously the racing fan-base likes the sound as punctuation for the display on the track.
And so long as it STAYS on the track, I'm fine with it.
Noise...is energy. It's air compression into sound waves. Noise off an engine, is energy that MIGHT have been used to push the piston but instead was vented off as an explosive report, 10,000 of them a minute.
There isn't - YET - the technology to harness that wasted energy; but it IS waste, the same way friction and thermal loss are wastes.