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influenced by the contemporary view that mathematics was a respectable alternative to the classics. When he entered Cambridge, he was ‘‘decidedly less advanced in mathematical skills than the best of his contemporaries,’’ but this situation changed, largely due to the stimulus of the Cambridge envi- ronment, to an intrinsically competitive nature, and to the influence of one of the greatest educators of all time— Edward John Routh. Rayleigh was coached to solve prob- lems, and he excelled at this. After graduation, Rayleigh embarked on a program of self‐education and developed a strategy for combining his love of experimentation with his more recently acquired problem‐solving skills. Details of this self‐education are related. Extensive illustrations are given of problems such as might have been presented to Rayleigh as a student, such as he might have presented to students himself, and such as might to good purpose be presented to acoustics students of today.
2005. Katherine S. Harris. Speech neglect: A strange educational blind spot
Speaking is universally acknowl- edged as an important human talent, yet as a topic of educated common knowledge, it is peculiarly neglected. Partly, this is a consequence of the relatively recent growth of research on speech perception, production,
and development, but also a function of the way that infor- mation is sliced up by undergraduate colleges. Although the basic acoustic mechanism of vowel production was known to Helmholtz, the ability to view speech production as a physi- ological event is evolving even now with such techniques as fMRI. Intensive research on speech perception emerged only in the early 1930s as Fletcher and the engineers at Bell Telephone Laboratories developed the transmission of speech over telephone lines. The study of speech develop- ment was revolutionized by the papers of Eimas and his col- leagues on speech perception in infants in the 1970s. Dissemination of knowledge in these fields is the responsibil- ity of no single academic discipline. It forms a center for two departments, Linguistics, and Speech and Hearing, but in the former, there is a heavy emphasis on other aspects of lan- guage than speech and, in the latter, a focus on clinical prac- tice. For psychologists, it is a rather minor component of a very diverse assembly of topics. I focus on these three fields in proposing possible remedies.
2006. William J. Strong. Descriptive acoustics of music and speech
A brief background is given of ‘‘Descriptive Acoustics of Music and Speech,’’ an introductory course taught at Brigham Young University for the past 40 years. Several concep- tual and physical models used in the course are described. Some phe-
nomena observed in music and speech are explained in terms of the models. Diagrams, sound samples, and video clips are used to illustrate the phenomena and their explanation.
2007. David T. Blackstock. Songs my students sang to me
Does the professor teach his/her students? Or do they teach the professor? While the answer to both questions is probably a qualified yes, in looking back, I see that what I know now is largely what they taught me. After a review of the research areas in which my stu-
dents and I have worked, a few examples are highlighted that show that what I had expected is not how things turned out.
2008. D. Murray Campbell. From the sublime to the scientific: What musicians and acousticians can learn from each other
Many university music pro-
grams include an acoustics module,
often taught by a physicist. At the
University of Edinburgh, such a
module has existed since the 1850s;
taking over this course as a junior
lecturer was my introduction to the
fascinating world of musical acoustics. It rapidly became clear that a meaningful communication between scientists and musicians required humility and willingness to learn from both sides. This lecture explores aspects of that mutu- al learning process, focusing on some controversial areas in which the reconciling of scientific and musical viewpoints has not always proceeded in a spirit of humility.
2009. James V. Sanders. Fundamental acoustics education and applications.
Teaching acoustics at the graduate level to professional naval officers, who, after graduation, will go back to driving ships, submarines, and air- planes, as well as other professional naval disciplines, offers a unique chal- lenge. The Naval Postgraduate School
has been the home for over 50 years of the textbook, Fundamentals of Acoustics, originally written by Lawrence Kinsler and Austin Frey and revised in later editions by Alan Coppens and James Sanders. Updating a textbook that is suit- able for undergraduate and graduate students in a multitude of disciplines at civilian institutions and also suitable for use by naval officers interested in underwater acoustics continues to be most challenging. Solutions to these and other teaching responsibilities in these environments, including long dis- tance learning, are discussed.
32 Acoustics Today, October 2013