FUNDAMENTALS OF SOUND
With Applications to Speech and Hearing

by W. J. Mullin, W. J. Gerace, J. P. Mestre, Department of Physics
and S. L. Velleman, Department of Communication Disorders
University of Massachusetts Amherst

The Book:
Fundamentals of Sound (Allyn & Bacon, 2003) is a book designed for persons interested in learning about the physics of sound and how it applies to the speech and hearing processes. The physics of sound is basic to the understanding of how we communicate, but students interested in speech and hearing may not possess the background for attaining a deep understanding within their own areas of study. The book is meant to provide the basics in the physics of sound, at a level appropriate for undergraduate non-physical-science majors, for further study of speech and hearing.

The Web Site:
This Web site is associated with the book and contains supplementary material that the reader should find useful. Any reference to web-related material is signaled by an icon in the margin of the book. Sound is a wave and as such it is a dynamic quantity. Frozen graphics are often inadequate to convey understanding without a struggle by the reader. For this reason this Web site contains animations, which show such situations much more clearly.

The Web site also contains a tutorial, which can be used to help the reader over some of the harder concepts or as a self-test. The tutorial consists of many multiple-choice questions involving every concept in the book. Users click on answers; when incorrect they receive hints and can retry. An official correct answer and detailed explanation is available at a click.

Throughout the book are scattered problems or questions denoted by "Answer This." The reader is meant to work independently on these problems and then compare with the answers given in this Web site. The tutorial contains many more questions than the ones in the Answer-This boxes.