This book began in the way most textbooks do, as notes put together for a new course. The physics of sound, however, lends itself particularly well to examples, demonstrations and student participation in experiments. There are thousands of YouTube videos of interesting sound phenomena and dozens of simulations related to the physics of sound and music. This book was created from trying to provide access to these resources in a single source, first from a web page, then as interactive simulations on web pages and finally as this interactive textbook.

Sound was authored by:

K. Forinash, Professor of Physics
School of Natural Sciences
Indiana University Southeast
New Albany IN 47150
kforinas@ius.edu

Wolfgang Christian, Brown Professor of Physics Emeritus
Davidson College Physics Department
Davidson NC 28035
wochristian@davidson.edu

Please contact the authors with suggestions or to report errors.

There are a great many people and institutions that have contributed to our efforts, and we take great pleasure in acknowledging their support and their interest. The Open Source Physics project has benefited tremendously from collaborations with U.S. and non-U.S. universities. In particular, we give special thanks and recognition to the Easy JavaScript Simulations developers Francisco Esquembre and Felix Garcia at the University Murcia, Spain. We would also like to thank the AAPT- ComPADRE team headed by Bruce Mason, Lyle Barbato, and Matt Riggsbee.

W.C. would like to thank his Davidson College colleague and collaborator Mario Belloni for his support and many contributions to the Open Source Physics project. He would also like to thank the numerous students who have worked with him over the years developing programs for use in undergraduate physics education. In particular, he would like to single out Drew Glassman and Jack Taylor for their work on the JavaScript adaptations of the original Java-based Physlet material.

K.F. would like to thank Indiana University Southeast for research reassigned time which was used for the preparation of the initial version of this tutorial and to the many students over multiple semesters who proof read the material and offered suggestions for improvement.