Level (logarithmic quantity)

Imagine you have a toy car that can go fast or slow. You want to measure how loud the car engine is when it's running. But instead of just saying "it's loud" or "it's not loud," you want to give a number to show how loud it is.

Now, let's say you have a magical tool that can measure the loudness of the car. This tool shows you something called "decibels." Decibels are a way to measure how loud something is. But there's one problem - the tool shows you a very big number like "100 decibels" when the car engine is really loud, and a small number like "20 decibels" when the car engine is quiet.

So, how do we make it easier to understand how loud the car is? We use something called a "logarithmic scale."

A logarithmic scale is like a special ruler that helps you measure things that are very big or very small. It's like when you use a magnifying glass to look at something very small, so you can see the details more clearly.

In our case, we use a logarithmic scale to measure the loudness of the car engine. The logarithmic scale helps us to make the measurements more understandable by compressing them into a smaller range. Instead of seeing a number like "100 decibels," we might see a number like "10 on the scale."

This is because the logarithmic scale compresses the range between 0 decibels and 100 decibels into a smaller range between 1 and 10. So, when we say "10 on the scale," we mean a loudness level that is equivalent to 100 decibels.

This makes it much easier to talk about loudness levels because we can use smaller, simpler numbers to describe how loud something is. And that's how a logarithmic scale helps us measure things that are really big or really small - like the loudness of a car engine!