Teaching Physics from the Din of Flying Discs #Acoustics23

Analyzing the sound of sailing discs can teach valuable signal processing lessons in an interactive way.

SYDNEY, Dec. 4, 2023 – Disc golf is booming, with record numbers of players turning up each year to partake in the disc-throwing sport. It is also whizzing and whistling. In fact, the sound a disc makes while soaring through the air toward its target is full of information about how fast the disc is flying and how quickly it spins.

This insight inspired Kyle S. Dalton of Penn State University to combine his two interests, disc golf and acoustics, into an interactive acoustic signal processing lesson. Dalton will present his work Dec. 4 at 3:40 p.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Time as part of Acoustics 2023, running Dec. 4-8 at the International Convention Centre Sydney.

Action shot of a person throwing a disc. This athletic pastime can help teach valuable lessons about signal processing by measuring the disc’s sound as it flies. Credit: Kyle S. Dalton

“When I took the introductory signal processing course in the acoustics curriculum, some of the example datasets we used came from noise sources such as aircraft, racecars, and fireworks displays,” said Dalton. “These datasets were effective for teaching new signal processing techniques, but those noise sources aren’t accessible to most students if they want to collect more data or experiment on their own.”

Dalton set three microphones in a line, spaced 25 feet apart, and connected them to equipment that converts each microphone’s signal to a data point on the computer. When he threw a disc with a small whistle mounted on top across the line of microphones, he recorded the flying disc’s acoustical signal.

“Listening to the disc allows me to capture multiple properties of the disc’s flight and observe the disc over a larger portion of its flight than is possible with some other measurement techniques,” Dalton said. “Radar guns are often used in disc golf to measure throw velocity, but don’t provide information on how fast the disc is spinning.”

Students can use the resulting dataset to learn basic processing tools and practice data visualization, using the Doppler shift to determine velocity, among other important lessons.

This experiment can be done in an open space, with a basic setup, and a practiced arm.

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Contact:
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–

The Acoustical Society of America is joining the Australian Acoustical Society to co-host Acoustics 2023 Sydney. This collaborative event will incorporate the Western Pacific Acoustics Conference and the Pacific Rim Underwater Acoustics Conference.

Main meeting website: https://acoustics23sydney.org/
Technical program: https://eppro01.ativ.me/src/EventPilot/php/express/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL23

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at
https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

ABOUT THE AUSTRALIAN ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY
The Australian Acoustical Society (AAS) is the peak technical society for individuals working in acoustics in Australia. The AAS aims to promote and advance the science and practice of acoustics in all its branches to the wider community and provide support to acousticians. Its diverse membership is made up from academia, consultancies, industry, equipment manufacturers and retailers, and all levels of Government. The Society supports research and provides regular forums for those who practice or study acoustics across a wide range of fields The principal activities of the Society are technical meetings held by each State Division, annual conferences which are held by the State Divisions and the ASNZ in rotation, and publication of the journal Acoustics Australia. https://www.acoustics.org.au/

Helping Acoustic Concepts Resonate with Students #ASA183

An experimental music piece can help teach concepts of resonance in a more interesting way.

Media Contact:
Ashley Piccone
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 7, 2022 – “I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now.” With these words, Alvin Lucier begins a fascinating recording where his voice warps and becomes indistinguishable over time — solely because of how sound reflects in the room. For physics students, this audio can be used to reveal details of the surrounding room and teach important lessons about acoustic resonance.

When a sound is made and recorded in a room, then replayed and rerecorded repeatedly, it becomes distorted. Frequencies that correspond to the room itself are emphasized. Credit: Andy Piacsek

Andy Piacsek, of Central Washington University, will discuss how he employs Lucier’s project in the classroom during his talk, “Students are sitting in a room.” The presentation will take place on Dec. 7 at 12:10 p.m. Eastern U.S. in the Lionel room, as part of the 183rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America running Dec. 5-9 at the Grand Hyatt Nashville Hotel.

To create this interesting audio, Lucier recorded seventy seconds of speech in a room, played it back over a speaker, and repeatedly rerecorded the result. Eventually, the feedback overwhelms the original recording, and the words are replaced by a collection of distorted frequencies.

In the first iteration of Lucier’s recording, his speech contains the typical range of sound frequencies that make up a human voice. When sounds at most frequencies bounce off the walls in the room, they get jumbled together and eventually fade out. But some frequencies ‘fit’ perfectly in the distances between opposite walls, and these frequencies resonate and grow louder with each recorded iteration.

“Each pair of walls has a set of natural frequencies,” said Piacsek. “By analyzing the frequencies that make up the recording, especially in the later stages, students can determine which frequencies are resonances of the room. The tricky part is figuring out which frequencies go with which pair of walls. This is a bit of a puzzle… and puzzles are fun!”

After identifying the resonant frequencies, students can apply their knowledge of physics to calculate the distance between pairs of walls, and therefore the size of the room Lucier used for his recording. More advanced students can try to make a version of the recording in their own rooms and see if their calculations match their measured room dimensions.

“At the introductory level, especially, many students come to a science class with the notion that science is dry and abstract, not something they identify with,” said Piacsek. “When they see how their classroom learning applies to scenarios they can relate to, it becomes less abstract and they remember it better.”

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL22&proof=true

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

Connecting industry to a more diverse student population

Felicia Doggett – f.doggett@metro-acoustics.com

Instagram: @metropolitan_acoustics

Metropolitan Acoustics, 1628 JFK Blvd., Suite 1902, Philadelphia, PA, 19103, United States

Popular version of 4pED4-Internships in the acoustical disciplines: How can we attract a more diverse student population?, presented at the 183rd ASA Meeting.

Metropolitan Acoustics has employed 26 interns over a 27-year period. Of those 26, there were 6 students who pursued careers in the acoustics fields; of those 6, there was only one who was both a woman and minority, and that person was a foreign born student who came to the United States for school. Not one woman or minority from the United States who interned with us starting from 1995 entered into the acoustics fields after graduation. This is a very telling microcosm into the Acoustical Society of America as a whole.

Within the acoustics fields, we need to ask ourselves how we are connecting to underrepresented student groups. The engineering disciplines are not very diverse and the few woman and minority groups that enter into the field often leave for a variety of reasons, which most often lead back to a lack of inclusion. It doesn’t have to be a mountain – it can simply be a molehill that sends someone off the track of having sustained and productive careers in the science and engineering fields.

At Metropolitan Acoustics, a large majority of our interns have been 6-month co-ops as compared to 3-month summer interns (23-3). For the most part, the students were fairly productive and we found that interest, enthusiasm, engagement, and work ethic are all factors to their success. Six of the 26 went into careers in acoustics, and one of them works for us currently. The gender and racial breakdown are as follows:

Gender diversity: 20 male, 6 female
Racial diversity: 20 Caucasian, 6 minority; of the 6 minorities, 4 male and 2 female
Out of the 6 interns that went into careers in acoustics, 5 are Caucasian males and 1 is a minority female who is not native to the US

As an organization, what are we doing to attract a more diverse pipeline of candidates to the acoustics fields? And perhaps a bigger question is how we plan to keep them in the field, which is all about inclusiveness. Dedicated student portals on organizational websites populated with videos, student awards, lists of schools with acoustic programs, and other items is a start. This information can be transmitted to underrepresented student organizations like National Society of Black Engineers, Society of Women Engineers, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Society of STEM Women of Color, American Indian Science and Engineering, among others with the hope that this information may light a spark in some to enter the field.

The Impact of Formal Musical Training on Speech Comprehension in Heavily Distracting Environments

Alexandra Bruder – alexandra.l.bruder@vanderbilt.edu

Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Department of Anesthesiology, 1211 21st Avenue South, Medical Arts Building, Suite 422, Nashville, TN, 37212, United States

Joseph Schlesinger – joseph.j.schlesinger@vumc.org
Twitter: @DrJazz615

Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Nashville, TN 37205
United States

Clayton D Rothwell – crothwell@infoscitex.com<
Infoscitex Corporation, a DCS Company
Dayton, OH, 45431
United States

Popular version of 1pMU4-The Impact of Formal Musical Training on Speech Intelligibility Performance – Implications for Music Pedagogy in High-Consequence Industries, presented at the 183rd ASA Meeting.

Imagine being a waiter… everyone in the restaurant is speaking, music is playing, and co-workers are trying to get your attention, causing you to miss the customer’s order. Communication is necessary but can be hindered due to distractions in many environments, especially in high-risk environments, such as aviation, nuclear power, and healthcare, where miscommunication is a frequent contributing factor to accidents and loss of life. In domains where multitasking is necessary and timely and accurate responses must be ensured, does formal music training help performance?

We used an audio-visual task to test if formal music training can be useful in multitasking environments. Twenty-five students from Vanderbilt University participated in the study and were separated into groups based on their level of formal music training: no formal music training, 1-3 years, 3-5 years, and 5+ years of formal music training. Participants were given three tasks to attend to, a speech comprehension task (modeling distracted communication), a complex visual distraction task (modeling a clinical patient monitor), and an easy visual distraction task (modeling an alarm monitoring task). These tasks were completed in the presence of a combination of alarms and/or background noise and with/without background music.

Image courtesy of Bruder et al. original paper. (Psychology of Music).

Our research focused on results regarding the audio comprehension task and showed that the group with the most formal music training did not show changes in response rate with or without background music added, while all the other groups did. Meaning that with enough music training, background music is not a factor influencing participant response! Additionally, the number of times the participants responded to the audio task depended on the degree of formal music training. Participants with no formal music training had the highest response rate, followed by the 1-3-year group, then the 3–5-year group, with the 5+ year group having the lowest response rate. However, all participants were similar in accuracy overall, and accuracy decreased for all groups when background music was playing. Given the similar accuracy among groups, but less frequent responding with more formal music training, it appears that formal music training helps inform participants to not respond when they don’t know the answer.

Image courtesy of Bruder et al. original paper (Psychology of Music).

Why does this matter? There are many situations when responding and getting something wrong can be more detrimental than not responding, especially in time pressure situations where mistakes are costly to correct. Although the accuracy was similar between all groups, the groups with some formal music training seemed to respond with overconfidence, but did not know enough to increase accuracy, resulting in a potentially dangerous situation. This is contrasted with the 5+ formal music training group, who showed no effect of background music on response rate and who used their trained ears to better judge the extent of their understanding of the information and were less eager to respond to a difficult task under distraction. It turns out that those middle school band lessons paid off after all, that is, if you work in a distracting, multitasking environment.

Going Virtual Hurts Student Career Prospects

Students less likely to engage with virtual networking events, increasing turnover, burnout

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

DENVER, May 24, 2022 – As in-person scientific meetings and gathering have been replaced by virtual meetings during the pandemic, students and young professionals are seeing career fairs and networking events transition into remote experiences that simply lack the same impact as getting together.

During the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, Ryan Harne, from Penn State University, will discuss how students and professionals can adapt to the virtual environment and increase networking opportunities. His presentation, “Ensuring the kids are alright: Ways to help students network with industry professionals in the age of virtual meetings and career fair disillusionment,” will take place May 24, at 4:15 p.m. Eastern U.S.

Many career professionals are also adapting to virtual events and working from home and prefer this over in-person meetings. Students still prefer face-to-face communication and are either uninterested in or unfamiliar with virtual interactions. The result is many networking opportunities are effectively closed to students and young professionals, limiting their ability to enter and thrive in their chosen fields.

“Students are familiar and adept at in-person communication and often do not accept virtual communication as a substitute in professional networking,” said Harne. “This trend can be linked to the decline of student participation in professional or society conferences when those meetings go virtual.”

Harne suggests the solution for companies looking to hire new talent is to reach students where they are by holding in-person career fairs and networking events on educational campuses. The goal for these organizations is to find new talent, and for students, they can be exposed to a variety of fields, helping them decide their career path, preparing them to enter the workforce, and reducing early career turnover.

This could prove challenging for many organizations that are seeking to transition permanently to a virtual environment. These companies may struggle to hire or retain young professionals who have little exposure to the careers they are beginning to enter.

“While remote or hybrid work environments are a sustainable solution for existing employees, they have the potential to provoke long-term high turnover of new hires who feel less inclined to ‘stick with it’ when there are lurches in their on-ramping due to the lack of rapport fostered by face-to-face engagement,” said Harne.

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
USEFUL LINKS
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eventpilotadmin.com/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING22
Press Room: https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/

WORLDWIDE PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Worldwide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay language papers, which are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio and video. You can visit the site during the meeting at https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, staff at media@aip.org can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

LEGO Down! Focused Vibrations Knock Over Minifigures

Time reversal technique focuses wave energy to knock over minifigure targets in museum demonstration

Media Contact:
Larry Frum
AIP Media
301-209-3090
media@aip.org

SEATTLE, December 2, 2021 — A tabletop covered in miniature LEGO minifigures. There is a whooshing sound, a pause, and then a single minifigure in the center of the table topples over, leaving the remaining minifigures standing.

Brian Anderson, of Brigham Young University, will discuss how this is achieved in his presentation at the 181st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, “Knocking over LEGO minifigures with time reversal focused vibrations: Understanding the physics and developing a museum demonstration.” The session will take place on Dec. 2 at 5:15 p.m. Eastern U.S. in the Elwha B Room, as part of the conference running from Nov. 29 to Dec. 3 at the Hyatt Regency Seattle.

Anderson and his team use speaker shakers to generate vibrations in a plate. They place LEGO minifigures on the plate, choose a target, and measure the impulse response between each shaker and the target location. Playing that very response from the shakers, but reversed in time, creates sound waves that constructively interfere at the target minifigure. The focused energy knocks over the single LEGO minifig without disrupting the surrounding minifigs.

This demonstration was transformed into a two-player game for a museum exhibit in a wave propagation museum hosted by ETH Zurich in Switzerland. Two visitors take turns focusing vibrations and attempting to knock over the LEGO minifigures on the other team.

The technique also has numerous applications beyond LEGO, and Anderson said it shows the power of focused vibrations.

“Time reversal has been used to focus sound in the body that is intense enough to destroy kidney stones or brain tumors without requiring surgery,” Anderson said. “I have used time reversal to locate cracks or defects with ultrasound in metal structures, such as storage canisters for spent nuclear fuel. Time reversal can also be used to locate and characterize earthquakes or locate gun shots within an urban city environment.”

———————– MORE MEETING INFORMATION ———————–
USEFUL LINKS
Main meeting website: https://acousticalsociety.org/asa-meetings/
Technical program: https://eventpilotadmin.com/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL21
Press Room: https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/

WORLDWIDE PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Worldwide Press Room will be updated with additional tips on dozens of newsworthy stories and with lay language papers, which are 300 to 500 word summaries of presentations written by scientists for a general audience and accompanied by photos, audio and video. You can visit the site during the meeting at https://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, staff at media@aip.org can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.