On The Syllabus

By Tom Dinki, BA ’16

Students equipped with sound level meters—i.e., their smartphones—traverse the North Campus, measuring the sonic environment in locations ranging from packed community spaces to sparsely traveled basement hallways.

It’s part of an assignment, and competition of sorts, for a course called Physics of Music, with teams vying to find the loudest sound, the quietest sound, and the most curious sound registering at around 60 decibels, the level of most normal conversations.

The quest is meant to help students understand sound intensity, or the power of a sound wave as it moves through the air relative to the human threshold of hearing. Sound intensity is about more than loudness. If you double the intensity of a sound wave, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will sound twice as loud.

“Our perception of loudness depends on our own hearing abilities and is a subjective experience,” explains Benedikt Harrer, associate teaching professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Not incidentally, the assignment also gives first-year students a push to explore campus. Harrer developed the course for the UB Seminar program, which was designed to introduce undergrads to academic life at UB by engaging them in small class settings centered around investigation and discussion. He drew from a physics of music course he previously taught as an upper-level elective at San José State University.

“I thought you could embed lessons on how to be a successful college student into a context that hopefully is interesting to students,” he says. “And the sound assignment is really an excuse to get them to venture into parts of campus they maybe haven’t been before.”

The loudest sounds tend to come from the more obvious sources, such as the Student Union during peak hours or the marching band at practice on the field. A student once surprised the class by finding sounds around 90 decibels coming from vents at a loading dock behind the Natural Sciences Complex.

Some of the quietest sounds have come from campus wildlife, from a hawk chirping outside Governors Complex to a garter snake making its way through grass.

Sounds registering at 60 decibels have included a vending machine and the ding of an elevator.

“The goal is to help students better understand the underlying principles of sound and show them that, even without a formal scientific background, they can scientifically investigate the world around them,” Harrer says.

Other learning activities for the course include listening to the same album on tape, vinyl and CD to detect the differences. Some students have even produced their own musical compositions and built their own instruments, from a recorder made of paper to a ukulele crafted in a woodshop.

“Physics is not just purely abstract, mathematical thinking,” says Harrer. “A lot of it is very creative work.”