Teaching acoustics in an interdisciplinary context with "singing" fish

This article describes a novel and interdisciplinary context for learning about real-world sound waves. The "song" of the Plainfin Midshipman Fish produces an acoustical wave that is periodic but not sinusoidal. This acoustical signal is the focus of active research in sound source localization by fishes, the effects of hormones on hearing systems and the elucidation of neural mechanisms involved in social acoustic communication. In this paper, we introduce the reproductive biology and bioacoustics of the midshipman fish. We describe the use of the advertisement "song" of the male fish to visualize and interpret the dramatically different displacement, velocity and acceleration waveforms; to explore the roles of pressure and particle motion in production and detection of acoustical waves; and to apply Fourier analysis to understand the implications of the frequency spectrum in the production, transmission and reception of sound in an aquatic environment.