How Noisy is Your Neighborhood?

Guest: Kent Gee, PhD, Professor of Physics, Brigham Young University; Dave Brown, BYU Technology Transfer Office You know that feeling of spending the first night in a new house? You’ve just signed away the next 30 years of monthly income to the bank and you’re lying in bed noticing all of this unfamiliar noise – the traffic whizzing along a major road a few blocks away, trains blowing their horns in the distance, your neighbor’s A/C unit humming away not far from your bedroom window. A real estate advice column once that said you should spend at least one night in a home before you agree to buy it. Not sure how that would work, exactly – what seller would agree to let a prospective buyer have a sleepover? But the reasoning is sound – there’s just so much about the noise in a particular place you won’t know until it’s too late. How great would it be if there were a Google Earth or Zillow-type website that could give you a noise ranking for a particular neighborhood? That’s what BYU physics professor Kent Gee is working on.