Talk:Absorption coefficient

- Absorption coefficients are not just related to sound, in fact they are used in the absorption of EM radiation by matter. The absorption coefficient, "mu" is defined the number of (nuclei/unit vol) * (scattering cross section) and units are inverse metres. Also, the mass absorption coefficient is mu/density.

Merger complete
Note: I've merged this article onto the page attenuation coefficient, due to the substantial overlap of content, neither page explaining why it should differ from the other, and no one objecting to my merge tag. I put in a section explaining the difference between absorption and attenuation. I think maybe this newly-merged page to be relocated to absorption coefficient, since that's the more common term, but I'll leave that for a future editor. :-)

If there were to be a split of this article in the future (and I'm not saying there should be) it would probably be more productive to have a split along the lines of absorption coefficient (acoustics). The distinction between how absorption is discussed in acoustics and x-ray-optics is a much bigger gap than the distinction between attenuation and absorption. --Steve (talk) 23:45, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Duplication
There is an other article Absorption Coefficient which is merged with Opacity (optics). I will try and sort this out, but it will mean unmerging Absorption coefficient. A B McDonald (talk) 23:13, 2 November 2015 (UTC)