Vic Sparrow's Acoustics and Vibration Animations
Giving Credit where Credit is Due
My Acoustics and Vibration Animations. website has received a rather significant amount of attention in the acoustics education community. I would like to publicly acknowledge that I learned how to make animations visualizing acoustics and vibration phenomena many years ago from Dr. Vic Sparrow. His animations inspired me to learn to make my own.
Dr. Victor W. Sparrow is currently the Director of the Graduate Program in Acoustics and an internationally recognized expert on sonic booms generated by aircraft and the propagation of those sonic booms through the atmosphere. Dr. Sparrow teaches a number of important core and elective graduate courses in acoustics:
- ACS 501 -- Elements of Acoustics and Vibration
- ACS 502 -- Elements of Waves in Fluids
- ACS 515 -- Acoustics in Fluid Media
- ACS 597 -- Nonlinear Acoustics
- ACS 597 -- Computational Acoustics
- ACS 597 -- Outdoor Propagation of Sound
- ACS 597 -- Spatial Hearing and 3D Audio
Inspired by his animations, I started to learn how to make my own animations with Mathematica. I recently gained access to some old computer archives, and found a repository of old animations that Dr. Sparrow had created back in the 1990's when I was his student. I converted these old Quicktime MOV files into animated GIF files and have posted them here so that others can enjoy the elegance and the craftsmanship that inspired me to begin making my own animations.
These animations are shared here (for historical and nostalgic reasons), with Vic's permission. They are presented without much commentary -- as I have created similar animations with detailed explanations for most of these concepts on my website.