Decibel
The decibel (dB) is a measure of the ratio between two quantities, and is used in a wide variety of measurements in acoustics, physics and electronics. While originally only used for power and intensity ratios, it has come to be used more generally in engineering. The decibel is widely used in measurements of the loudness of sound. It is a “dimensionless unit” like percent. Decibels are useful because they allow even very large or small ratios to be represented with a conveniently small number (similar to scientific notation). This is achieved by using a logarithm.