Computing the curriculum—Embedding computation in undergraduate acoustics

Abstract

I will describe an approach to teaching acoustics to undergraduate engineering students that integrates mathematics, coding, numerical computation, and physical measurement. This approach developed and continues to develop according to my experience as Director of taught acoustical programmes at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) in the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Southampton, UK. Our program is somewhat unusual in that it teaches acoustics in depth to undergraduate students, whose understanding of the physics must develop in parallel with their proficiency in mathematical analysis and coding. I will explore how both numerical computation and coding can be integrated into an acoustics curriculum from the very start, how their inclusion can enhance learning, and how the curriculum can be restructured in order to make best use of these elements, highlighting the features of acoustics as a subject that make it particularly suited to this approach. I will also discuss how the choice of programming languages and environments, and modelling software affect the curriculum and vice versa. I will present examples from my teaching using Jupyter (formerly IPython) notebooks and discuss how to use these effectively.