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Comment by DoctorOetker

I don't understand why they believed in such high attenuation numbers.

They quote a book that the public at large (including me) can not check for the 22dB/cm/Mhz number.

The next best quote is the 8.3 dB/cm/Mhz quote. That article is available to the public:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1560344/pdf/nihms94...

However I don't see any expression claiming a linear frequency dependence of attenuation up to 10 MHz.

> the number people will tell you in conversation.

Is very vague. Do your own research, find actual measurement data, don't extrapolate a few sub MHz measurements out to 10 Mhz, especially not if the error bars become ludicrously big.

Since I can't find the quoted frequency coefficient for attenuation I look at the possible candidates in that article: there's Figure 11, Table 1 and Table 3.

My gut feeling tells me they used table 3:

frequency in MHz | Longitudinal attenuation in Nepers per meter

0.272 | 14 +/- 17

0.548 | 53 +/- 43

0.840 | 70 +/- 28

I suspect they discarded the middle frequency because of the large error bar, so they are left with

Mhz | Np per m

0.272 | 14 +/- 17

0.840 | 70 +/- 28

the difference in frequency is 0.568 Mhz

so the difference in attenuation is then 56 +/- 45 Np per m. Yes the standard deviation is almost as large as the value. Let's see if we arrive close to their supposedly "quoted assumed linear frequency dependence of 8.3 dB / cm / Mhz "

2 x (56 Np per m) / ( 0.568 MHz x 100 cm per m x log(10) Np per 10 dB)

= 8.56 dB / cm / Mhz

close to their 8.3 "quote" which is really their own deduction, or whomever "derived" it in "conversation".

If you calculate the error bar: 8.56 +/- 6.88 dB / cm / MHz.

What they independently measured (props! actually good science):

11.18 dB / cm / MHz

Thats 2.62 / 6.88 = 0.38 standard deviations away. Thats not new science in the sense of hypothesis rejection, but a valuable extra datapoint refining the literature of values.

The likelihood of measuring a value 0.38 or more standard deviations away from the expected value would be: 70.4 % so not very surprising at all. Basically in conformance with the 8.56 +/- 6.88 dB / cm / MHz value.

https://www.mathportal.org/calculators/statistics-calculator...

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