Math of Sound is my collection of interactive animations created to help people explore the math and physics of acoustics, develop an intuitive understanding of how sound works, and share in the curiosity and excitement I have for acoustics.
Who Am I
I am Noah J. Parker, a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in Acoustics at Penn State University studying under Dr. Dan Russell — creator of the well-known Acoustics and Vibration Animations. I'm inspired by his passion for teaching acoustics and want to do my part in the effort to make acoustics as visual and accessible as possible.
Spring 2023
Why Interactive Animations
Acoustics is all about waves, and waves are always changing with time. It's incredibly hard to understand complex wave behavior by staring at still pictures in a textbook (I've spent a lot of time trying exactly that). To really understand what a wave even is, I needed to see how the air itself moves as a wave travels through it.
Even better than watching a wave is being able to interact with it. When you can put your hands (or mouse I guess) on each of the parameters in an equation, that equation changes from being a piece of math to an observation about reality. I think interactive animations can help when both teaching and learning about acoustics to move abstract ideas into the concrete.
That is the motive behind everything I am doing with Math of Sound: I just want to help people explore some math and physics, build real understandings of how sound works, and share my curiosity and excitement for acoustics.
How the Site is Made
It's just me, stubbornly building everything from scratch and refusing to use AI because I feel like something awaits for me in the divine for resisting. Designing the website itself lets me pretend to be an artist while making the animations as accurate as possible lets me pretend to be a physicist. And who wouldn't want to be an art-ro-physicist!
My Story
I grew up in Price, Utah, where my fascination with sound and vibration began while helping my grandparents build classical guitars. It amazed me that a vibrating string could shake a wooden box in just the right way to radiate sound waves in which our ears can distinguish tones. Those tones can stack to make chords. Those chords can change in rhythm to create music. That music can carry emotions, evoke memories, and communicate feelings you don't even have words for... all of that, starting with just a few wiggling strings, seems like magic to me and I always want to learn more about it.
A guitar I built with my grandparents.
Contact
I'm always happy to learn how people are using the site, hear about improvements you'd suggest, or just talk about the amazing world of acoustics. You can send a message through my feedback form or email me at noah@mathofsound.com.
