Talk:Acoustics

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Help with this template Comments: edit – history – watch – refresh This is a response to the Wikipedia Physics Project's invitation to comment on this article which they have assigned as "starter" and "important". What's there is a good start and there's obviously work to be done. It's a good approach to list the fields of acoustics and to make it neutral by following some authoritative body/bodies such as the Acoustical Society of America. The problem is that the list is so long as to be overwhelming especially for a non-acoustician. It's a tough problem. My suggestion is that a historical-summary introduction may be a good way to indicate the breadth of the field and introduce the reader to some of the very broad subfield categories so that the long list of fields would be more tractable. I'm a former student of R. W. B. Stephens whose 818-page textbook starts with a 10-page historical introduction. It begins with a mention of 4000BC music and so to architecture, natural science etc. as they developed. When I first read it I didn't understand why he had written it at such length, but now I think that indeed this may be the best way to structure an introduction that indicates the scope of the field. I could try making a half-page precis of his introduction, and putting his textbook onto the reference list. Adrian Pollock (talk) 20:36, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

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1 Split up?
2 Link suggestions
3 What is Wolffian Accousitics?
4 Psychological Acoustics
5 List clean up
6 Archaeoacoustics
7 External Links
8 Article Cleanup Co-Ordination Point
- 8.1 Discussion
9 Improving the See Also section
10 Schools
11 Career

[edit] Split up?

The sound pressure level section is mostly covered in Sound pressure level, and I think the rest should be moved to that article. Similarly, should the resonance sections be moved to Acoustic resonance, along with the acoustic bits from resonance? - Omegatron 15:35, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Link suggestions

An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Acoustics article, and they have been placed on this page for your convenience.
Tip: Some people find it helpful if these suggestions are shown on this talk page, rather than on another page. To do this, just add {{User:LinkBot/suggestions/Acoustics}} to this page. — LinkBot 01:03, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

And what about astro-acoustics...neverming 22 google hits...then planetary acoustics. Well, there is a study of observing sounds on other planets as well as earthquakes...I mean marsquakes and it should be related to acoustics. –Gnomz⁰⁰⁷(?) 02:37, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm with you, Gnomz, and congratulations if you are the person who coined the word "astro-acoustics" - awesome subject, I have had some original thoughts but zero communications about it until now. Regarding marsquakes - glad to see your mention, there were interesting moonquake antecedents in the 1970's. Strong links of course, between seismology and acoustics. Adrian Pollock (talk) 20:57, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What is Wolffian Accousitics?

I'm an acoustician and have not heard this definition before, shouldn't it be placed under the "biomedical acoustics" heading? It seems a bit out of place,

Mikael Ogren, Sweden

[edit] Psychological Acoustics

Shouldn't this term read "Physiological Acoustics", if we're talking about "the study of the mechanical, electrical and biochemical function of hearing in living organisms"?

("Psychological Acoustics" could appear as another name for "Psychoacoustics"?)

Kapadia58.167.192.143 06:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List clean up

User:Skoban has suggested that the list of disciplines needs to be cleaned up. I agree and would do it, but am at a lost about how to make it better. Any suggestions? pheon 13:39, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

The American Institute of Physics has established the Physics and Astronomy Classification (PACS) system. Within that, Section 43 deals with Acoustics, and it is very complete. It includes Psychological, physiological, biological, and medical acoustics as well as those subjects we would normally associate with physics and mechanics. You can find the PACS for Acoustics at http://www.aip.org/pacs/pacs08/acoustics_appendix.html. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.43.65.245 (talk) 20:58, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Archaeoacoustics

I think there should be a mention of archaeoacoustics somewhere on this page. --Max 03:41, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

Someone put an external link to

Calculations - Ohm's law as acoustic equivalent

While this is an interesting link, it is not tied to anything on this page apart from being in the same general topic area. It might fit on the Sound page if there were a discussion of impedance pheon 02:20, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article Cleanup Co-Ordination Point

Cleanup Co-ordination
	This article has recently been tagged as requiring cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The article may have been flagged as needing cleanup because it has been suggested that: the article needs formatting, proofreading, or rephrasing in comprehensible English. the article has multiple overlapping problems. the article is very short and might need expanding, removal or merging with a broader article For a full list of possible problems see Wikipedia:Manual of Style. As part of the cleanup process, the automated bot PocKleanBot has generated this notice as a focus of cleanup efforts, and also contacted several contributing editors of the article to bring their attention to the problem. You should use this section to discuss possible resolution of the problem and achieve consensus for action. Only when there is a consensus that the article is now cleaned up should you then de-list it by deleting the cleanup tag from the article, this causes the article to drop off the monthly cleanup-needed list page.
[edit] Discussion

Cleanup Co-ordination

This article has recently been tagged as requiring cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.

The article may have been flagged as needing cleanup because it has been suggested that:

the article needs formatting, proofreading, or rephrasing in comprehensible English.
the article has multiple overlapping problems.
the article is very short and might need expanding, removal or merging with a broader article

For a full list of possible problems see Wikipedia:Manual of Style.

As part of the cleanup process, the automated bot PocKleanBot has generated this notice as a focus of cleanup efforts, and also contacted several contributing editors of the article to bring their attention to the problem. You should use this section to discuss possible resolution of the problem and achieve consensus for action. Only when there is a consensus that the article is now cleaned up should you then de-list it by deleting the cleanup tag from the article, this causes the article to drop off the monthly cleanup-needed list page.

[edit] Discussion

Not clear just why this was flagged. The main problem I see is that the list, though good (insofar as it comes from an authoritative source) is very long and could look formidable to non-acousticians approaching the subject. It's hard to introduce such a broad and diverse subject and the present introductory section is somewhat bitty. My suggestion is that a summary of the historical development of this field of knowledge might be the best structure for giving a new reader a feeling for its scope. R. W. B. Stephens' 800-page textbook has such a 10-page historical introduction. I'm considering making a precis of it, as short as reasonably possible, and introducing it as a perspective lead=in to the list. Whaddya think ? Adrian Pollock (talk) 01:21, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

It would certainly be an improvement ;) Gabriel Kielland (talk) 01:28, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea. On earlier versions there was a lot of material about the physical principles that might be of interest, too. It was deleted because of redundancy with other articles, but I still think that it has some place on this page. In the mean time, I'm going to remove some of the redundancy. Joe056 (talk) 05:05, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Noted your changes Joe and look forward to working with you on this, I'll try to draft something with the historical perspective on New Year's Day. Adrian Pollock (talk) 06:56, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm putting draft material on /temp. Comments and edits invited. This is intended to improve the article by using historical narrative to give a more structured account of how acoustics and its subfields developed. Adrian Pollock (talk) 03:13, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Re latest edit making acoustics a branch of "classical mechanics" rather than of "physics": interesting, but I'm concerned that this may seem to exclude branches of acoustics such as musical, physiological. I do agree that "physical acoustics" is well identified as a branch of "classical mechanics". So I may do a revert but more comments here invited. Adrian Pollock (talk) 20:06, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

If you are watching this article, please note that changes have been planned and prepared on /temp during the last six weeks, responsive to the cleanup request. It's intended to put this material up on or about February 15, 2008, largely replacing the current material on which it is based. Any comments please make here. Adrian Pollock (talk) 05:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I just put up all then new material, and I think it's a huge improvement. I'm a bit worried that an anti-vandal bot might revert the changes, so help me watch out for that. You brought up a good point about that one inline reference being awkward. I think it would look much better if there were more inline citations to go with it. I'll work on that, and I hope that others will, too. You also mentioned the length and formatting of the see also section. Are there wp guidelines for that? I checked but couldn't find any. On the one hand, it's good to have a central point to so many different acoustics topics. On the other, the list is lengthy and probably won't be read. Maybe you should ask your adopter.Joe056 (talk) 19:48, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Great job putting it up, Joe ! I just fixed a typo (decibals/decibels). As you say it's a huge improvement. There's so much else in Wikipedia on detailed acoustical topics, I really think this was the right choice to set up this central article basically as a switching/starting point. It could get longer but doesn't have to. Still a few ragged edges here and there that we can continue to work on, while seeing what others have to say. Yes, it'll be good if you can improve the reference list (how ? Identify the top classics in the subdivisions ? Look for some good modern textbooks, maybe inexpensive ones, Rayleigh in paperback etc.??) I will pursue getting the "See also" list into columns. Anyway thanks, it's been a pleasure working with you ! Adrian Pollock (talk) 02:11, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Improving the See Also section

In order to shorten the "see also" section, I'm going to try to link to some of those articles in the text of the article. Let me know if you don't like the idea, we can just revert it. Joe056 (talk) 04:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Schools

Are there any schools that offer acoustics as a feild of study.? I know of Penn State. that is it.

--- Please refer to the Acoustical Society of America Web site: http://asa.aip.org/asagrad/gpdir.cm.html

[edit] Career

Any larger companies that do acoustical research/testing?

There are several schools which give a degree in acoustics. Penn State, University of Southampton, and, I believe, another European school (Germany?). In addition, there are multiple schools with programs with concentrations in acoustics, University of Texas at Austin, George Washington University, UCLA, etc. The Acoustical Society of America has, in the past, compiled books on the schools offering graduate programs. HerbK (talk) 23:35, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

--- For a "High School Counselor" level overview, see the Acoustical Society of America web page, http://asa.aip.org/acou_and_you.html. Each of the sub-genres of acoustics listed in the Main article (and many combinations of them) can potentially provide a career in acoustics. A quick search at Monster.com with keywords "acoustics", "vibrations", "noise and vibration", or "NVH" will give a decent idea of professional opportunities in at least a few dimensions of the field. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.43.65.245 (talk) 20:45, 25 April 2008 (UTC)