At night, why does everything seem louder?

Question

Well, why do things seem louder at night? Everything from watching tv, to even typing this message... why is everything louder at night? It cant be due to outside noise, since i live in a busy area with lots of cars and other noise, but even they seem louder at night.

Answer 1

One of the reasons is background noise but there is another. At night heat is lost from the ground, particularly in clear conditions. This means that the temperature of the air is lower closer to the ground. Now the speed of sound depends on temperature: the warmer it is the faster sound travels. It is now best to refer to a wave diagram: the sound is refracted by the atmosphere as it travels faster at higher altitudes. So more sound energy from a source reaches you by night than by day.
I still think that background noise is a factor: there are less cars at night: even if not close to you there will be in the nearest town and these add to the background noise.
The attached animation could be improved: press the night button and imagine the wavelength being longer at higher altitudes.

Answer 2

When it gets to night people go to bed, and there's generally less noise around the place. If you're still up though, your ears get used to the absence of noise and it means they can hear smaller sounds. This also means that normal sounds get heard a lot louder by your ears. Also at night there are not many different sounds competing for your attention so all your hearing power goes towards the things that are still making noise. Hope that answers your question.

Answer 3

There's less going on at night, so there's actually less noise. Therefore, what noises you do hear seem a lot louder. Just be thankful you don't have my hearing range, which is better than normal to begin with; at night, I can hear a car coming almost a mile away.

Answer 4

because the noise level has gone down .
you are not aware of how much noise there is in the air during the day ,because you are listenin g to it all the time ,but the traffic ,birds,peopel talking ,music ,factories all put a lot of mnoise in the air which blanket out individual sounds.
in the night all of this is gone so the noises that are around seem louder because they are now in isolation.

Answer 5

Because the air around us is finite, it only has limited conducting capacity. During the day, light photons occupy most of the finite air space relegating acoustic emenations to less evident bandwidths. At night, once the photon count drops, sound waves have less resistance so are less distorted and travel at near light speeds until reaching areas of light saturation. You will notice during a thunderstorm that you will sometime hear a thunderclap immediately following a flash of lightning but that sometimes there will be a significant pause. It all depends upon the ambient light levels during the discharges.

Answer 6

You are depending less on your eyes to provide your brain with information. The ears take over the task of identifying things that go bump in the night. Also, there is less background noise (traffic, people, etc.) to cover up the noises your home makes.

Answer 7

i think it's because of the nocturnal animals or day is their nite and vice versa... so when they wake up they make a lot of noise non-stop... well that's my opinion... don't take it agains't me and also becuase not many ppl are awake and even the little things are heard louder

Answer 8

during the day everything is louder so at night when everyone is sleeping and its quite everything you do seems louder

Answer 9

Because it is harder to see at night, and as they say, when one sense fails, all other senses increase sharpness, because you have less to be aware of. It is also because there is a lack of things going on in the night rather than in the day.

Answer 10

it is an illusion , things seem louder , but when you test ,they are not. there is less sonic inteference at night and sounds are clearer, but that is different to louder.