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Acoustic Radiation

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Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

Definition

Acoustic. One branch of physics which studies sound.

The word acoustic comes from the Greek word akoustikos. “which is related to hearing.”

Sound. It comes from the Latin word sonum: “which is related to the hearing sensation created by perturbation of the material medium (elastic, fluid, solid).” In physics, it is a vibration, generally in a gas, created by expansion and compression of gas molecules. Sound waves propagate in the fluid medium and do not propagate in the vacuum. Sounds can be produced in the atmosphere and oceans by living animals or by structures through interaction with the wind, as, for example, trees murmuring, mountains roaring, river sounds, and waves breaking and can be created by various instruments such as music instruments, microphones, speakers, and transducers and also by instruments developed for remote sensing such as SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging), ADCP (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler), and SODAR (Sound Detection and Ranging or what...

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Bibliography

  • http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/waves/radiate.htm

  • Neff, W. D., and Coulter, R., 1986. Acoustic remote sensing. In Lenschow, D. (ed.), Probing the Atmospheric Boundary Layer. Boston, MA: American Meteorological Society, Vol. 201, p. 242.

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  • Vagle, S., and Farmer, D. M., 1992. The measurement of bubble size distributions by acoustical backscatter. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 49(9), 630–644.

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  • Weill, A., and Blanc, M., 1987. Design of an acoustic package for Titan boundary layer and surface properties knowledge: the ASTEK system (Acoustic System for Titan Environment Knowledge). In Proceedings of the ’CASSINI Surface Workshop’. Washington, DC: E.S.A., 16 pp.

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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Weill, A. (2014). Acoustic Radiation. In: Njoku, E.G. (eds) Encyclopedia of Remote Sensing. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-36699-9_1

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