Acoustics Course Research Articles

Case study: Developing an acoustics program in Ecuador Through Capstone Projects

The Coastal Polytechnic School in Guayaquil, Ecuador is the leading engineering school in the country. Recent efforts have been targeted towards the creation of an acoustics program that enables students apply basic acoustics knowledge in real-life problems that the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering currently has. With the lack of courses in acoustics, various capstone projects have been conducted by the students under the supervision of experts in acoustics. Most of the basic training in acoustics theory is given during the first weeks of the project and then the student is exposed to field work by taking measurements utilizing different test procedures to obtain acoustical metrics. Then, a subsequent analysis is performed under the supervision of various experts. These capstone projects will be the stepping stone for the first programs in industrial acoustics in the City of Guayaquil and will help newly graduates understand the importance of acoustics throughout their careers. The end goal is to have a well-established program with relevant undergraduate courses in acoustics.

Graduate programs in acoustics in the Physics and Oceanography Departments at the Naval Postgraduate School

The Departments of Physics and Oceanography at the Naval Postgraduate School offer graduate programs leading to MS and PhD degrees. The acoustic track within the Department of Physics offers degrees in applied physics and engineering acoustics. Engineering acoustics degrees can be completed in either resident or distance learning modes. The department also offers stand-alone academic certificate programs in fundamentals of engineering acoustics, underwater acoustics, and sonar system applications, with a set of three certificates leading to a MS degree in engineering acoustics. MS and PhD programs are interdisciplinary, with coursework, traditional lectures, and laboratory exercises drawn primarily from the fields of physics, electrical engineering, and fundamental acoustics. The Oceanography Department offers degrees in both Physical Oceanography and a joint degree with Meteorology that are interdisciplinary. Both oceanography degrees contain a fundamentals of ocean acoustics course which is tightly coupled to the curriculum through dispersion relations. Connections between ocean processes and detection theory are made through a course on tactical oceanography. Subjects covered in both departments include fundamentals of acoustics; the generation, propagation, and reception of sound in the ocean; acoustic signal processing; and detection fundamentals.

Acoustical oceanography curriculum at The University of Texas at Austin

The acoustical oceanography (AO) curriculum at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) consists a number of courses and thesis research, which often includes field work. The core course is EE/ME 384N-5, Underwater Acoustics, which covers acoustic properties of the ocean, propagation, reflection, reverberation, scattering and target strength, ocean noise, array and signal processing and basic sonar design. The course is offered in alternate years and is cross-listed as both an electrical and mechanical engineering course. Prior to this, students usually take two semesters of physical acoustics: EE/ME 384N-1 and 2, Acoustics I and II, which covers plane waves in fluids, transient and steady-state reflection and transmission, lumped elements, refraction, ray acoustics, absorption and dispersion, spherical and cylindrical waves, radiation and scattering, multipole expansions, Green’s functions, waveguides, Fourier acoustics, and Kirchhoff theory of diffraction. Both are offered every year. Another course commonly taken by AO students is EE/ME 384N-3: Electromechanical Transducers, which covers basic modeling, analysis and design of acoustics and vibration transducers, including calibration. Recent student thesis topics have included marine acoustic ecology, the investigation of methane seeps, acoustic seagrass monitoring, and the assessment of glacial processes. Appropriate courses in UT’s natural and earth sciences departments supplement the acoustics courses.

Acoustical oceanography meets bioacoustics: Teaching ocean acoustics to biologists and physicists at the University of Victoria

The graduate-level Ocean Acoustics course at the University of Victoria is targeted at students in different departments with diverse backgrounds, ranging from physics to biology. We lead the students through a series of lectures, discussions, and assignments to provide fundamental knowledge of acoustical oceanography and marine bioacoustics, with subjects ranging from acoustic propagation modelling and geophysical inverse theory to soundscape ecology and the impacts of underwater noise on marine life. Given the varied background of the students, we must balance the material so that the course covers physical concepts without being too “math heavy” for the biologists, and so the physicists can understand and appreciate the biology. We frame assignments around skills that the students can use in their graduate research, and also give the students opportunities to review scientific papers and give presentations to the class. We have taught this course for two years now, and students have come out with a deeper understanding of the physics of sound and how it is affects marine life, providing a good foundation for their graduate research in various aspects of underwater acoustics.

Building a mathematical model for a simple harmonic oscillator that uses educational methods found in both physics education research and in the language disciplines that make it accessible to undergraduate students in an introductory musical acoustics course

At the basis of any course in acoustics is the fundamental idea of the simple harmonic oscillator. The term alone is confusing to students with little to no background in physics or math. For courses in musical acoustics at the undergraduate level, this topic is often minimized due to the lack of preparation. This, in turn, results in a more superficial approach to the advanced topics. While deriving the mathematical treatment from first principles is out of reach to these students, approaching the math itself as a language where they are building a description of a simple mass and spring system in their new, yet somewhat familiar, language can be accomplished through pictures, graphs and hands on activities. Students begin to build a vocabulary of “words” that can be strung together in “sentences” that tell the story of how the motion of a mass on a spring is produced. Emphasis is placed on the analogous comparison of physical properties by relating variables such as amplitude and frequency to that of volume and pitch. This model can then be used as a building block to the understanding of how sound is produced, propagated and perceived.

Improving quantitative literacy through a general education acoustics course

Most Colleges and Universities have some form of quantitative reasoning requirement for graduation. A narrow view of this requirement is that students need to do some mathematics in the course to demonstrate some facility at calculating quantities. Additionally, students often discuss their discomfort with mathematics when discussing their anxiety about registering in a non-majors physics course. In this presentation, I will discuss strategies used in a musical acoustics course for non-science majors to address proportionalities, graphical representations, and approximations to help students get past equations to think about the underlying physical relationships. Often, I find that students actually are much better at using mathematics than their self-assessments. By giving students different contexts for mathematical thinking, the quantitative elements make more sense to them and calculations become less intimidating. The examples I will discuss focus on using classroom-based experiments to identify relationships between dependent and independent variables on topics such as musical scales, simple oscillators, and fourier analysis.

Early development of a set of interactive tools for undergraduate acoustics education

Using interactive learning materials has been found to increase the efficiency of teaching math and physics concepts fundamental to acoustic phenomena; this presentation will discuss work done to explore their use in undergraduate acoustics courses. During the Spring 2024 semester at Penn State, three undergraduate courses in acoustics were offered, each aimed at different types of students at differing levels of mathematical rigor. These were: a general education elective for freshmen from non-STEM majors, a sophomore/junior level course required for communication science disorders majors, and a junior/senior elective for STEM majors. Observation of each class during the semester identified a variety of topics for which a web-based interactive tool could improve student understanding and engagement. This talk will discuss some of the topics identified as potentially benefiting from an online interactive tool, with a specific focus on one interactive webpage which may serve as an example template for the style and delivery of future developments. This specific interactive webpage explains basic trigonometric functions in a manner approachable by students at any level of mathematical confidence, by illustrating geometric implications with interactive graphs, explaining with a conversational tone, and addressing the etymology of some of the mathematical terms.

Considerations for mathematical backgrounds and goals of music students in introductory acoustics courses

Many music institutions include an introductory course in acoustics as prerequisites for certain classes and/or requirements for graduation of a degree program. With the topic involving science, there are mathematical concepts that are naturally introduced to the students. For instruction of music students this may result in challenges as the range of their mathematical background is generally larger. Aside from difficulties in the coursework, it is also common where students will not utilize the mathematical concepts from the course throughout their career. Therefore, it is crucial to survey the typical level of the students' interests and skills in mathematics to align it with the course objectives and determine the methods of instruction. This presentation will focus on modifying the level of mathematical instruction based on the goals of typical music students and the real-world applications of the learned content.

Using music to motivate learning mathematics in acoustics courses

Mathematics often intimidates students, especially if they feel unprepared for the math level in the course. However, when they see how math and music are intimately related, their attitude often changes. Many fundamental aspects of music are described by math. These include note frequencies, chords and scales, consonance and dissonance, and instrument tuning. The reactions to music of consonance and dissonance are related to the relative ratios of the notes in a chord or note sequence in a piece. The connection between music and math forms the basis for designing instruments that play the music. Instruments must be designed to replicate the note frequencies, while their geometry allows them to be being playable by humans. Mathematics is at the heart of instrument design. I will suggest ways to present these concepts to students for their greater appreciation of how acoustics and math are related.

The Graduate Program in Acoustics at Penn State

The Graduate Program in Acoustics at Penn State offers graduate degrees (M.Eng., M.S., Ph.D.) in Acoustics, with courses and research opportunities in a wide variety of subfields. Our 820 alumni are employed around the world in military and government labs, academic institutions, consulting firms, and consumer audio and related industries. Our 40 + faculty from several disciplines conduct research and teach courses in structural acoustics, nonlinear acoustics, architectural acoustics, signal processing, aeroacoustics, biomedical ultrasound, transducers, computational acoustics, noise and vibration control, acoustic metamaterials, psychoacoustics, and underwater acoustics. Course offerings include fundamentals of acoustics and vibration, electroacoustic transducers, signal processing, acoustics in fluid media, sound and structure interaction, digital signal processing, experimental techniques, acoustic measurements and data analysis, ocean acoustics, architectural acoustics, noise control engineering, nonlinear acoustics, outdoor sound propagation, computational acoustics, biomedical ultrasound, flow induced noise, spatial sound and three-dimensional audio, and the acoustics of musical instruments. Distance education students pursuing the M.Eng. degree join resident students in a hybrid classroom environment. This poster highlights faculty research areas, laboratory facilities, student demographics, successful graduates, and recent enrollment and employment trends.

Extended playing techniques as a source of unusual acoustic phenomena to explore with music students

When teaching acoustics, instructors typically consider musical instruments to introduce students to the science of sound. Common examples, such as the flute as an open pipe or the behavior of a string fixed at both ends, are often used to illustrate the acoustics of musical instruments. In addition, when teaching acoustics to advanced musicians, one could take advantage of the precise prior knowledge that students have regarding both conventional and extended playing techniques. When using extended techniques, musicians may incorporate unusual ways of producing sound with their instruments, as is often found in contemporary classical compositions. This unusual sound production might even result in a counterexample to the classical textbook case. For example, the so-called slap-tongue technique on the saxophone or clarinet produces a free (and highly damped) oscillation of the reed, which contrasts with the self-sustained oscillations of the reed if the instrument is blown as usual. Based on insights gathered during an introductory course in musical acoustics at the mdw—University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, this paper highlights how extended techniques not only challenge our understanding of musical acoustics but also serve as interesting phenomena to explore interactively with students in the lecture room.

Prediction of psychological impacts of noise from ventilation systems

Air-conditioning ventilation systems are essential for maintaining good indoor environmental quality. However, the noise generated by these systems can have negative psychological impacts on occupants, such as dissatisfaction, discomfort, disturbance, and unacceptability. This problem cannot be solved simply by reducing the noise level. With the help of a valid, reliable, and applicable psychometric tool called the psychoacoustics perception scale (PPS), the psychological impacts of the noise on human general judgment (Evaluation, E), sensitivity to the magnitude (Potency, P), and sensation of the temporal and spectral compositions (Activity, A) of sounds can be quantified. A holistic sound quality assessment was proposed to cover the objective assessments of traditional indoor criteria and acoustic metrics, as well as subjective assessment using the PPS. The correlations found between the objective characteristics of the noise from ventilation systems, the PPS scores, and the occupants’ cognitive performance can extend traditional noise level prediction to the prediction of psychological impacts of air-conditioned environments. This advanced knowledge of noise prediction will help acoustic professionals in the design of teaching courses in acoustics, noise, and vibration control, as well as in building services engineering, and throughout the built environment.

Strategies for assessment of student learning outcomes via the final project in a general education acoustics course

Learning outcomes of the final project in an undergraduate general education acoustics course were assessed via three short essay questions on an open book final exam. For the project, students construct a simple sound-making device or musical instrument that produces at least four different sounds using ordinary household objects, recyclables, etc. They are required to develop a hypothesis about how changes in the device will change the properties of the sounds. They then test their hypotheses using spectrograms, FFT measurements, and/or sound level measurements. The written responses of 60 students were downloaded and stripped of identifiers. The first two essay questions were designed to assess whether students could connect the steps of their project with the scientific method and explain therationale for their choice of measurement methods based on their hypothesis. These results were assessed via rubrics. The third question was an open-ended reflection on what they learned about acoustics by completing the project, and how they learned it. These responses were assessed via qualitative data analysis. Results, key findings, and implications for the design of the assignment and future assessments will be discussed.

Engaging students with team based and open-ended response projects in a descriptive acoustics course

Helping non-science majors feel comfortable in a physics class can be a challenge. Inclusive pedagogy techniques encourage creating learning communities and providing more opportunities for students to engage with the content. Elements of Team Based Learning (TBL) and open-ended response projects were applied to a descriptive acoustics course. TBL allows students to work with permanent, strategically placed teams during the semester. Teams are selected to help spread the abilities uniformly for all teams to be successful. In this course, group activities, a group component of exams, and the peer evaluation were implemented. The evaluation holds students accountable for their effects with their teams, rewarding students who work hard and minimize freeloading, an often-challenging aspect of group work. In addition to TBL, open-ended response projects were used in place of a research paper. Students can choose to research an acoustics topic or perform their own experiment. The students can also decide how they would like to present their work. The flexibility allowed students to display their results in a variety of ways from traditional written work to podcasts.

Wind farm acoustics course for engineering students

The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) has two learning outcomes for all engineering students that relate to “public health, safety, and welfare” and the need to consider “the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts.” We describe the development of a one-credit hybrid course on wind energy acoustics that meets these learning outcomes. This course was one of five one-credit modular courses on different aspects of wind energy developed via a SUNY-funded initiative. Topics included human and environmental impacts of wind farm noise, sound perception, noise regulations, wind farm noise generation and propagation, and noise control. Students gained the acoustics background needed to understand the necessary technological aspects of wind farm noise. They used simple models to predict community noise levels and assess noise control strategies and then completed a case study project in which they proposed and debated strategies for reducing the negative impacts of a controversial wind farm. Upon completion of the course, the students expressed that they had not previously considered the possible impacts of wind farm noise. They seemed to have grown in their ability to think holistically about the potential societal and environmental impacts of wind farm noise.

When a simple demonstration of resonance in a forced oscillation system proved that resonance does not exist

Students in an introductory musical acoustics course attempted to recreate a simple forced oscillation system to verify its resonant frequency. The procedure followed ideas and instructions found in a YouTube video from Animated Science to show resonance. This was tested by the instructor prior to the experiment, who found it to be straightforward to assemble and to make the appropriate measurements. The calculated frequency was found to be within 2.5% of the experimental value. The students were given two identical springs, each with a spring constant of 30 N/m and a 100 g mass, as well as a function generator and apparatus needed to connect the system. The video shows the mass suspended between the two springs with one end driven by a function generator while the other end is fixed. A meterstick was placed behind the mass spring system to get a rough estimate of the peak amplitude. 6 separate groups of 3 students each tried to assemble the system as shown. Not a single set-up worked as it did in the video. The reasons for this were as varied as the number of groups doing the experiment. The experiment was refined over several years into a well-executed experiment.

Using standards-based assessment and reporting in a general education acoustics course

Standards-based assessment and reporting is a method of grading in which each student is responsible for demonstrating mastery of a set of course objectives called standards. In this course, students are assessed on each standard using short assessments that resemble a quiz, usually one or two pages long. Each standard is assigned a rating on a 5-step scale. The student's ratings throughout the semester determine the final grade the student will earn. If a student is not satisfied with a rating on an assessment, they are allowed to reassess the standard to demonstrate they have developed a fuller understanding of the topic. This method of student assessment is intended to encourage students to develop intrinsic motivation for learning the course material. Students are also not penalized for having a bad exam or quiz score due to unforeseen circumstances. Students often report that they need time at the start of the semester to get used to the grading system but that they ultimately see the benefit to their learning.

Development of a waves and vibration concept inventory: Challenges and applications

A useful tool for measuring learning gains and for assessing the effectiveness of instruction in the physical sciences is the “concept inventory.” This is a set of questions administered at the beginning of a course, or prior to a unit of instruction, as well as at the conclusion. Students may told their scores, but are not provided with the answers. An early example is the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), published in 1992, which has been widely adopted for use in introductory physics courses and has served as the model for concept inventories. This presentation describes the ongoing development of an inventory designed to test conceptual understanding of basic principles of vibration and wave propagation that are typically covered in a first-year physics course or introductory or intermediate courses on acoustics-related topics. The current version builds on previous work by the author to develop a more focused inventory for an introductory course in musical acoustics (https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.5067886). Results from the trial use of this inventory in multiple courses at Central Washington University will be discussed.

Jack of all trades: Challenges and opportunities for mentoring in interdisciplinary research

Biomedical acoustics spans a particularly broad range of disciplines from neuroscience to quantum physics and everything in between. While this diversity is exciting and constantly stimulating, it can pose considerable challenges for students and mentors in finding the appropriate balance between breadth and depth. The aim of this talk is to share the author’s experience of designing graduate and undergraduate courses in biomedical acoustics and particularly of supervision and team building for graduate and post-doctoral researchers from different disciplines. Key topics will include the importance of co-supervision, promoting understanding and implementation of the scientific method; encouraging curiosity driven experiments; vital lessons from science communication; and finally the surprising insights provided by training to teach dance.

Partnering with Students to Increase Engagement and Inclusion in an Undergraduate Phonetics & Acoustics Course

An introductory phonetics course provides foundational content for future clinical practice and may serve as a student’s first experience within the field of Communication Sciences and Disorders. The Students as Partners framework (Cook-Sather et al., 2014) offers a model for valuing student assets and experiences in co-creating learning materials to enhance active learning and deepen understanding. Incorporating positive affective feelings around learning complex material, integrating technology, and building a mutually respectful learning community can foster inclusive practices. In this manuscript, the authors share how redesigning an introductory Phonetics and Acoustics course at a large, urban, commuter, public university led to increased student engagement, increased practice, increased collaboration, and increased generalization. This was achieved through personalized content and activities, warm-up activities that fostered success and integration, and co-created active learning activities, such as phonetic memes, spectrogram cards, phonetic pun activities, and sociolinguistic discussions of personal experiences. Thematic analysis of course evaluation data for the redesigned course revealed themes related to: student-instructor partnerships; practice opportunities and clinical application; and sense of belonging within the learning community.