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The Physics of Sound and Music, Volume 1
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18 April 2024

This first volume of ‘The Physics of Sound and Music: A complete course text’ is a textbook providing a complete resource to accompany undergraduate courses on the physics of sound and music, and is supplemented by the lab manual in volume two of this two-volume set. This textbook is written in an accessible, clear and conversational style with the intent of engaging students and teaching physics without appearing overwhelming. The book starts with an introduction to sound and music, then discusses various aspects of sound, from how it is produced to how it propagates and how we hear it. The remainder of the book focuses on the various aspects of music, from musical tones to musical instruments, and concludes with a discussion of how sound can be recorded for replay. Problems and solutions are provided in each chapter.
Key Features
- Provides a complete resource to accompany one semester undergraduate courses on the physics of sound and music
- Introduces sound and music, sound production, sound propagation, sound reception, the physics of musical instruments, and sound recording
- Written in an accessible, clear and conversational style with the intent of engaging students without appearing overwhelming
- Includes multimedia resources (audio and video), links to video recordings of lectures and comprehensive problems and solutions
- Can be supplemented by the lab manual in volume two of this two-volume set
SCIENCE / Acoustics & Sound, Wave mechanics (vibration and acoustics), SCIENCE / Waves & Wave Mechanics, SCIENCE / Physics / General, Acoustic and sound engineering, Musical instruments
Part I Introduction
1 Introduction
2 Sound, music, and noise
3 Music, history, and culture
Part II Sound production
4 Tension and deformations in a string
5 Vibrating systems
6 Damping and resonance in musical instruments
Part III Sound propagation
7 Sound propagation
8 Factors that impact sound propagation
Part IV Sound reception
9 Sound power and sound intensity
10 The human factor
11 Psychoacoustics
12 The acoustics of rooms
Part V Of sound and music
13 Musical tones, pitch, timbre, and vibrato
14 A musician’s graph paper and musical scales
Part IV Musical instruments
15 Stringed instruments
16 Percussion instruments
17 Wind instruments
Part VII Appendix
Appendix A: Review of mathematics
Appendix B: Unit conversions
Appendix C: Logarithms