Two Classes, One Room: A Partition Bound for Shared Teaching Space

Many schools teach two classes in one hall divided by a curtain or a mat. Using the mass law for transmission loss at speech frequencies, this paper computes what woven mats, plywood and a single brick wall actually deliver against the loss a neighbouring class requires. The mat result is a disproof: light partitions fail by a wide margin whatever their height, and the paper identifies the cheapest construction that meets the bound and the scheduling alternative when no partition can. Computed results: TL_woven_mat_2kgm2 = 13.0, TL_plywood_5kgm2 = 21.0, TL_single_brick_180kgm2 = 52.1, TL_double_mat_gap = 19.0, TL_needed_dB = 20. Every number in this paper is produced by the accompanying script `compute.py`. SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED.