Ocean acoustics away from the ocean

Abstract

Acoustics represents a small portion of the overall educational effort in engineering and science, and ocean acoustics is one of many topic areas in the overall realm of acoustics. Thus, maintaining teaching and research efforts involving ocean acoustics is challenging but not impossible, even at a university that is more than 500 miles from the ocean. This presentation describes the author's two decades of experience in ocean acoustics education and research. Success is possible by first attracting students to acoustics, and then helping them wade into a research topic in ocean acoustics that overlaps with their curiosity, ambition, or both. The first step occurs almost naturally since college students' experience with their ears and voice provides intuition and motivation that allows them to readily grasp acoustic concepts and to persevere through mathematical courses. The second step is typically no more challenging since ocean acoustics is a leading and fascinating research area that provides stable careers. Plus, there are even some advantages to studying ocean acoustics away from the ocean. For example, matched-field processing, a common ocean acoustic remote sensing technique, appears almost magical to manufacturing or automotive engineers when applied to assembly line and safety problems involving airborne sound.