Physics 1240 : Sound and Music

• Many simulations I use in class and some superposition examples I showed.
• Acoustic Handbook: a very nice reference to all things auditory with lots of demonstration sound clips
  in particular, look for examples of Beats, Critical Bands, Cocktail Party Effect, and Decibels
• Physics Classroom: simple lessons on sound and music with sample problems (with answers)
• Music Acoustics at the University of New South Wales, Australia
• Exploratorium music stuff for kids, but fun :-)
• Hyperphysics which covers all of physics, and has a good section on sound and hearing.

• Doppler Effect Animation: Physics 2000 Website (with sound)
• Doppler Effect: Police Radar
• Doppler Effect: the Fear of Physics website
• Doppler Effect: a cute ambulance animation
• Doppler Effect: ExploreLearning animation
• Ripple Tank Applet on Paul Falstad's website: watch waves propagate, interfere and diffract; see also waves on a string
• Diffraction of Waves: an applet from the University of Hawaii

• Discussion of Decibels (from the University of New South Wales website)
• Krakatoa Explosion of 1883 (making the loudest noise ever recorded)
• Sound Intensity Examples: decibel levels in everyday life
• Loud Sound: high power sonar kills whales (4 pages)
• Stevens' Power Law (how we perceive different stimuli)
• What are Decibels? (from answers.com)

• Trumpet Acoustics : John T. Lynch shows and discusses measurements of resonances in trumpets
• the University of New South Wales, Australia has a nice introduction to musical acoustics, including discussions of Wind and Brass Instruments
• Miscellaneous Instrument Sound Samples from the University of Iowa

• Making Vowel Sounds: the San Francisco Exploratorium uses models of the vocal tract to convert a duck call into vocal vowels
• singing and the human voice from Stanford University
• Why Noone Understands Sopranos: a review of research on vocal formant tuning and vowel changes (University of New South Wales, Australia) - here's a PDF version for easy printing

• Ear physiology: Earworks at Wisconsin
• Musical Perception: Diana Deutsch's website at UCSD
• Binaural Effects & Musical Illusions: examples of how to confuse your brain with sound

• A Tutorial on Temperament from the University of Toronto
• Tuning Guitars : an interesting site discussing intonation, tempered scales and the construction of guitars
• Just Intonation Explained: this page discusses general principles relevant to tuning
• Pythagorean vs. Equal Temperament: a graphical comparison
• Different Tunings: Examples from the Michigan Tech website
• Michael Harrison and his harmonically tuned piano

• Random Synthesis Applet from Mathematica, pretty fun
• Fourier Synthesis Applet from Valdosta State University in Georgia: use harmonics to build up a sawtooth waveform
• Spectral Synthesis Applet from National Taiwan Normal University: build up harmonics online
• Fourier Synthesis Applet from Valdosta State University in Georgia: use harmonics to build up a sawtooth waveform
• Fourier Synthesis Applet on Paul Falstad's website: make different waveforms and modify them; see also waves on a string
• Sound Recording: review analog and digital recording and learn how CDs work
• Download Spectrogram frequency analysis program
  This version of the program (version 5) is free. You can download a more recent version from the web but it requires a license after 10 days.
• Sound file conversion utilities: there are many available on the web. Here are Switch and a CD Ripper program that will convert between file formats such as cda, mp3 and wav.
• Sound Samples: bat | chord | didgeridoo | driveby | drumroll | flute | ohno | orca | sing | warbler | warning
• Bagpipe Sounds: chanter | tenor drone | bass drone

• Auditorium Acoustics from Stanford University
• Aercoustics Engineering Tutorial on Building Acoustics
• nice pictures of various famous concert halls
• Odeon Room Acoustics Software audio examples of reverberation
• Effects of reverberation on speech: examples from Columbia University
• Classroom Acoustics : the NCEF Website archive

Download units conversion program

CU directories  

Gamow Tower Weather Station  

Physics Question of the Month  

Physics 2000 Homepage (at the University of Colorado)

Physics Education Technology (at the University of Colorado)

Official Atomic Clock Time (am I late for class?)  

Satellites visible from Boulder this week  

Images of famous scientists