Book Description
Acoustic and elastic wave propagation is being investigated in media such as the ocean, the earth, biological tissues and solid materials. In these different areas, many specific imaging techniques have been developed which differ in the wavelength of the sound, its polarisation and the instrumentation used. In this interdisciplinary book, leading experts in underwater acoustics, seismology, acoustic medical imaging and non-destructive testing present basic concepts as well as the recent advances in imaging. The different subjects tackled show significant similarities. This volume gives an up-to-date-overview of the field and is intended for scientists and graduates alike.
Also available online in LINK:
http://link.springer.de/series/tap/
Access to table of contents and abstracts is free. Subscribers have access to the full text in PDF format when asking for a password. ... Read more

Book Description
This book's purpose is to investigate tone in terms of musical values and in many ways is an outgrowth of a course taught by the authors and some of their colleagues over the last ten years. The reader is supplied with principles rather than techniques and insights rather than rules; in short, with the fundamental facts to which all further musical activities can be related. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Learning about the basics of music
I have read many books on music but Levary end Levy book is a real step by step guide to the fundamentals of musical theory.

It is clear, easy to read and gives hints to understand many facts that are not considered in most of the books about music.

I have recommended this book in the last 25 years and hope then it will be printed again for the benefit of people interested in more than just hearing nice sounds. ... Read more

Book Description
How can a piano tuner obtain such high precision with no other measuring device than their own ears? How can a sequence of notes seem to rise continuously despite coming back periodically to the same notes? What are the possibilities and the limits of digital sound? These are a few examples of questions that are discussed in this book, which presents an overview on the nature of musical sounds, from their production by acoustic music instruments to synthesized sounds obtained with computers.
The topics that are treated include sound propagation, Fourier and time-frequency analysis, psychoacoustics, analog and digital signal processing theory, computer science and MP3 sound compression, and of course... music! ... Read more

Book Description
This book is a history of acoustics from the 19th century to the present, written by one of the preeminent members of the acoustical community. The book is both a review of the major scientific advances in acoustics as well as an account of famous acousticians and their discoveries. The development of the Acoustical Society of America is described. Acousitics is distinguished by its interdisciplinary nature and the book explores the field's development in its relationship to other sciences. In addition to covering the history of acoustics, the book contains a last chapter on the future of acoustics. Many lovely historical illustrations are included. Robert T. Beyer is the Editor-in-Chief of the AIP Series, Modern Acoustics and Signal Processing. Other appointments include past Vice- President and President of the Acoustical Society of America, as well as Fellowships with the Acoustical Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and IEEE, respectively. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Wonderfully lucid.I should have read this book long ago.
Short Review:
The photos and plots in this book are exemplary.They complement the material perfectly, building up intuitional understanding of the phenomena at the same time the text allows you to handle the physics mathematically.
Each chapter follows logically.Everything builds up step by step from the most basic case of a simple harmonic oscillator, and the book has a feeling of progression that encouraged me to keep going.Every chapter brought new understanding to things I vaguely knew about, but was fuzzy on quite why it was that way.
Although the basic systems discussed are pendulums, masses-on-springs, and linear strings, the text also contains plenty of information on how the theory built by examining these simple systems can apply to many other places where the same differential equations apply - especially electric circuits, but also acoustics.
Vibrations and Waves does a superb job as a concise and clear introduction to how wave phenomena work.

Longer Review:
I recently read this book as review while preparing for a more advanced class on quantum mechanics (a theory about waves).I had previously taken a course on vibrations and waves using the (out of print) text by Crawford.Although Crawford's book is probably good, I never read the text carefully though because it was monstrously long.

French presented itself as friendly and readable, without bogging me down in unnecessary detail.It turned out to be exactly that.The chapters were short enough I could read them in one sitting.The problems varied from straightforward applications of what was already stated in the text to ones that made me think for a while, without being so overbearing as to waste my time or become unduly frustrating.There are also answers printed in the back of the book - in my opinion absolutely essential for any book to be used for self-study.

I actually enjoyed reading Vibrations and Waves, which is not the norm for reading physics texts, at least for me.The photos were gorgeous.They were black and white, and not fancy, but the experimental setup used to get the photos was often both clever and instructive.Just when it got difficult to understand just what the equations were saying, there was a picture to demonstrate the system's response.The Lissajous figures and pictures of nodal lines of 2-D surfaces were interesting enough to be worth looking at in their own right.

After reading this book, I feel like I have a much firmer understanding of coupled oscillators and coupled differential equations, the wave equation, refraction, diffraction, and other boundary effects, which were all things I knew enough about to be able to describe, roughly, but not enough about to claim a useful comprehension of the subject.
The introduction of complex numbers and the complex exponential is truly masterful.

I would like to have the time to read French's other introductory physics books, but even if I don't I'll remain glad to have read this one.

Misses a lot
The book gives a good introduction to the concept of waves, beginning with vibrational modes of coupled oscillators of springs and strings. However, it neglects analysis of Electromagnetic waves that I feel are not a far cry from the topics presented. I also think that more information could be given on dispersion, mediums, and boundary reflections and transmissions.

As a Student
I recently took a class on Vibrations and Waves and the professor ended up using this book mainly for the course.It was somewhat difficult to read through and the material in the book often has little to do with the actual practice problems.Also, there are no examples and many of the chapters refuse to go into important detail of some topics, assuming the reader to know a good deal.

If only every textbook was this good...
I used this book instead of the originally assigned text (H.J. Pain's truly awful "Physics of Vibrations and Waves") in a class I took recently. It was a pleasure to read.

In spite of the fact that the book is quite short (and quite compact in your bag), it covers the material very thoroughly. The author writes clearly and with a lot of attention to the needs of the student. French's style is also very lively and makes you want to read on instead of feeling you are obligated to. The problems at the end of each chapter are excellent. It is also inexpensive.

All in all, quite a gem in this day of boring, incomprehensible, too-heavy-to-carry $120 textbooks that arrive in a "new" less readable edition every year. If only every textbook could be like this.

It isn't quite perfect -- every once in a while a derivation gets obscure and a few topics aren't covered -- but it is very, very good. I highly recommend it.

Very nice book on the subject
This is a terrific book.It would benefit slightly from incorporating matrices in one part of the text, but given the level of student it's geared toward, that's not a fatal omission.French's style is clear and thorough.I am a fan of all his books, and have no qualms recommending this one. ... Read more

Book Description
Acoustic waves of high amplitude explore the nonlinearity of the medium they propagate in. Acousticians from all over the world discussed the special phenomena thereby brought about in gases, liquids, and solids. They range from shock waves, the rupture of liquids (cavitation), cleaning, cooling, light from sound and sound from light, to chemical synthesis, kidney stone destruction and hemostasis (stopping of bleeding by sound). Topics inluded are: nonlinear wave propagation, wave scattering and interaction, resonators and waveguides, sound beams, sound sources and focusing, thermoacoustics and streaming, waves in solids, microstructured and damaged materials, granular media, metrology, nondestructive testing and evaluation, cavitation bubble dynamics, optic cavitation and aspherical bubble collapse, single bubble sonoluminescence, multi-bubble cavitation and sonoluminescence, sonochemistry, biomedical applications, wave propagation in bubbly liquids. ... Read more

Book Description
This major work covers almost all that has been learned about the acoustics of stringed instruments from Helmholtz's 19th-century theoretical elaborations to recent electroacoustic and holographic measurements.

Many of the results presented here were uncovered by the author himself (and by his associates and students) over a 20-year period of research on the physics of instruments in the violin family. Lothar Cremer is one of the world's most respected authorities on architectural acoustics and, not incidentally, an avid avocational violinist and violist.

The book - which was published in German in 1981 - first of all meets the rigorous technical standards of specialists in musical acoustics. But it also serves the needs and interests of two broader groups: makers and players of stringed instruments are expressly addressed, since the implications of the mathematical formulations are fully outlined and explained; and acousticians in general will find that the work represents a textbook illustration of the application of fundamental principles and up-to-date techniques to a specific problem.

The first - and longest - of the book's three parts investigates the oscillatory responses of bowed (and plucked) strings. The natural nonlinearities that derive from considerations of string torsion and bending stiffness are deftly handled and concisely modeled.

The second part deals with the body of the instrument. Special attention is given to the bridge, which transmits the oscillations of the strings to the wooden body and its air cavity. In this case, linear modeling proves serviceable for the most part - a simplification that would not be possible with lute - like instruments such as the guitar.

The radiation of sound from the body into the listener's space, which is treated as an extension of the instrument itself, is the subject of the book's final part.

Lothar Cremer is Professor Emeritus at the Technical University of Berlin, where he served as director of the Institute for Acoustical Engineering. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

The coupling between acoustic waves and fluid flow motion is basically nonlinear, with the result that flow and sound modify themselves reciprocally with respect to generation and propagation properties. As a result this problem is investigated by many different communities, such as applied mathematics, acoustics and fluid mechanics. This book is the result of an international school which was held to discuss the foundation of sound--flow interactions, to share expertise and methodologies, and to promote cross-fertilization between the different disciplines involved. It consists essentially of a set of pedagogical lectures and is meant to serve not only as a compact source of reference for the experienced researcher but also as an advanced textbook for postgraduate students, and nonspecialists wishing to familiarize themselves in depth, at a research level, with this fascinating subject.