Page 8 - Fall2021

From the Editor
Arthur N. Popper
Acoustics Today Collections I am pleased to announce a new web- based initiative that provides access to past articles from Acoustics Today (AT) on specific topics. This initiative,
“AT Collections” (available at bit.ly/AT-Collections), is for anyone who wants to learn about various topics in acoustics.
Although we envision “AT Collections” as particularly useful for supplemental reading for classes in college or graduate school, we anticipate that “AT Collec- tions” will also be invaluable for anyone else wanting to learn about a particular topic. Indeed, for those of my generation, the “model” we have in mind are the course packets of offprints from articles in Scientific American that we used in various college and graduate school classes.
The inception for “AT Collections” was the realization that the magazine has almost 300 scholarly articles (plus numerous essays) covering a wide range of topics. However, if someone wants to find all the articles and/or essays on a particular topic, they have to go through 17 years of back issues. A formidable task! (Though brows- ing back issues is fun since you may find something interesting to read that you never saw before.)
So, to help potential users of back articles in AT find
all the material on a particular topic, we have set up “AT Collections” pages so that they have links to all the past articles on a specific topic. Thus, as I write this, collections include musical instruments, animal hearing, and concert hall design. By the time you read this, we hope to have additional pages. Moreover, we are asking your help to add many additional pages on
topics that members may find useful for their teach- ing or work.
In addition, we are using “AT Collections” to bring together information about the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) such as pages featuring all past essays
about Technical Committees, ASA Administrative Com- mittees, and Standards.
Suggest Topics for “AT Collections”
In order to add pages to “AT Collections,” we ask read- ers to suggest new ideas for pages, perhaps based on the kind of material that would serve a particular course you have taken or are teaching or a work-related issue (e.g., anthropogenic sound and marine animals for regulators). Send your suggestions and a rough idea of the topic you would like to cover to me at apopper@umd.edu. If we decide to use the suggested page, we will ask you to put together a full list of articles and, if you like, to write a short paragraph about the topic that will be featured (over your name!) describing the page.
Finally, we do not limit the number of articles in a collec- tion but suggest no more than 10-15. But the topic should be relatively specific.
Now for the Fall Issue
The first article in this issue is by Andrea Alù, Chiara Daraio, Pierre A. Deymier, and Massimo Ruzzene on topological acoustics. The authors discuss a new field of research that manipulates sound using topological concepts.
This is followed by an article by Steven L. Garrett who shares the history of textbooks on acoustics. I think that every reader, no matter their discipline, will find the story of the evolution of acoustics texts from the first by Lord Rayleigh to the new open-source text by Steven (an ASA Press book) quite interesting.
AT has had a number of articles on the acoustics of built spaces, but this has never included a discussion of the unique acoustics of worship spaces. So, in his article, David W. Kahn shares insights into the very fascinating differences in the acoustics design of a concert hall to that of churches and synagogues. I don’t think I’ll ever walk into a worship space again without renewed interest in its acoustics, and I suspect that other readers will find they come away from this article feeling the same way.
In the fourth article, Robert (Bob) Ruben writes about the origin and history of ways to determine hearing loss. Bob not only talks about the design of instruments to
8 Acoustics Today • Fall 2021