(Do people still use the word ‘blogosphere’? No? Oh.)
This is not my first blog. I was also a co-founder and co-author of the Acoustics Research Centre blog while I was working at SINTEF Digital’s acoustics group. We intended this blog as a place where the acoustics researchers at NTNU and SINTEF could write about their research and their insights into acoustics. Over the years, I wrote several posts there, both under my own name and through the Acoustics Research Centre account.
Here are some of my favourites:
- How do you imitate the sound of traffic? At SINTEF, I worked on a project on auralising traffic noise. This means artificially generating noise from traffic that fits a given situation, taking into account the presence of buildings, noise screens, the softness of the ground, and so on. In this post, I described our method along with some sound examples.
- What is pressure, really? [in Norwegian] During my PhD, my work touched on the kinetic theory of gases. That might be the reason why I think much of continuum mechanics is best understood as arising from how individual atoms or molecules interact. In this post, I explained how pressure arises from molecules bouncing off a surface. I also discussed how the nature of pressure places a limit on the sensitivity of microphones.
- Acoustic quantities [in Norwegian] For laymen, decibels is a tricky enough concept. Public noise regulations go beyond that, using complex quantities to describe sound. These quantities take into account how sounds typically vary with time, and how our hearing perceives different frequencies differently. In this four-part series, I tried to explain as simply as possible of how these quantities work. In the end, I covered all of the quantities currently used in Norwegian noise regulations.
Come to think of it, it’s a shame that many of these posts are only available in Norwegian. Maybe some of them are due for English translations on this new blog…
Image: The Acoustics Research Centre blog‘s header image; original photo by Thor Nielsen