Module overview
Light barely penetrates the ocean, but sound travels through it for hundreds of kilometres, which is why sound is the primary tool for exploring and understanding the underwater world. The same physics that lets sonar map the seabed and marine mammals navigate by echolocation also underpins the ultrasound used to image and treat the human body. This module will describe the underlying physics of sound propagation in liquids and discusses the engineering challenges when designing and assessing underwater acoustic systems.
You will study the physical principles that govern how sound propagates in the ocean and learn to build and apply rudimentary models of sound transmission. You will explore the different types of acoustic systems and how man made systems are analysed to inform design decisions, then apply those same principles to understand how marine mammals echolocate and how acoustic systems contribute to their conservation. Turning to biomedical applications, you will see how ultrasound is used both for diagnosis and for therapy, and how the intense sound fields involved lead to non linear propagation that shapes the behaviour of these systems.
By the end of the module, you will be able to describe and model sound propagation in liquids, analyse underwater and biomedical acoustic systems, and reason about the effects of non linearity in high intensity fields. These skills open the way to careers and research in sonar, marine science and medical ultrasound, and they connect the acoustics you have studied to two of its most distinctive and rapidly developing application areas.