Michael Anderson with Jesse Beresovsky

Advanced Undergraduate Acoustics Experiment

Acoustics represents a body of science that is rich in theory and new concepts and has many applications in everyday life. Unfortunately, many undergraduates are not afforded the opportunity to explore acoustics past a brief introduction. The purpose of this project, then, is to implement an acoustics experiment in the undergraduate advanced laboratory course in the CWRU Physics Department. The experiment will closely follow suggestions made by Robertson and Parker in their 2012 paper Acoustic impulse response method as a source of undergraduate research projects and advanced laboratory experiments.[3] Students will learn skills in signal processing and data analysis as they probe the acoustic impulse responses of PVC waveguides with a condenser microphone and wide-range monitor.

Paper