Question: What do you do to stop an aeroplane from making so much noise?

Sarah Hunt answered on 13 Nov 2016:

Hi, that’s a brilliant question! Noise is a big part of aeroplane engine design, because noise is a form of pollution (just like throwing rubbish into the ocean). And we want to reduce the noise pollution as much as possible. So, believe it or not, the noise that aeroplanes make is very low compared to what it would be if we didn’t think really carefully about the design. Have you ever heard a fighter jet fly past? It’s muuuch more noisy than a holiday aeroplane because fighter jets are not designed to reduce noise pollution. The best way to reduce noise is to have a large bypass ratio, which means lots of cold air passing over the internal hot engine. A large bypass ratio means that the engine needs to have a large diameter (be really wide), which is why holiday aeroplane engines look much bigger than fighter jet aeroplanes 🙂