Animations created in Mathematica for acoustics education Free

One of the unifying assumptions in acoustics and vibrations is that waves and structures move and vibrate. In teaching these topics it makes sense to show students exactly HOW things move. For the last several years the authors have been using the symbolic manipulation program Mathematica [Wolfram Research, Inc., Champaign, IL] to produce brief animations for teaching acoustics. World Wide Web sites have been created for easy access to the animations by all students. The present paper will explain how the animations are created and will demonstrate several including one and two degrees of freedom oscillators, a piston in a tube, reflected waves, doppler effect, elastic waves, circular membranes, and circular plates. The current animations are relatively simple constructions to keep the file sizes to a minimum. However, improved animations containing substantially enhanced graphics will be possible with Internet 2. , for Education Division of Special Session ‘‘Acoustics in Multimedia— Systems issues‘‘