engineering

Mardi Hastings

Mardi Hastings is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mardi Hastings rather than just read about it. In short: Mardi Cox Hastings is an American mechanical engineer specializing in undersea acoustics, including "the generation, propagation, and biological effects of anthropogenic sound in the marine environment" and especially the effects of human-generated sound on fish. She is a retired professor at Georgia Tech and a former president of the Acoustical Society of America.

Key takeaways

Mardi Hastings belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mardi Hastings to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mardi Hastings from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mardi Cox Hastings is an American mechanical engineer specializing in undersea acoustics, including "the generation, propagation, and biological effects of anthropogenic sound in the marine environment" and especially the effects of human-generated sound on fish. She is a retired professor at Georgia Tech and a former president of the Acoustical Society of America.

Education and career Hastings was a mechanical engineering student at the Ohio State University, where she received both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree. Next, she became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech, in 1987. She returned to Ohio State as a faculty member in mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering, before moving in 2002 to the Office of Naval Research. After this, she became a professor of mechanical engineering at Pennsylvania State University and then Georgia Tech, until retiring in 2014. She served as president of the Acoustical Society of America from 2011 to 2012. She has also chaired the Noise Control and Acoustics Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Book Hastings is a coauthor, with Whitlow Au, of the book Principles of Marine Bioacoustics (Springer, 2008).

Recognition Hastings received the 1993 Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award of SAE International. She was named as a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America in 1996. In 2005 the U.S. Federal Highway Administration gave her their Environmental Excellence Award. She was the 2011 recipient of the Per Brüel Gold Medal for Noise Control and Acoustics of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and the 2014 Rayleigh Lecturer of the ASME Noise Control and Acoustics Division.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mardi Hastings

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mardi Hastings claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mardi Hastings before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mardi Hastings ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mardi Hastings

In research: Mardi Hastings appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mardi Hastings in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mardi Hastings is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century American mechanical engineers, American acoustical engineers, American women engineers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mardi Hastings outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mardi Hastings in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mardi Hastings means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mardi Hastings out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mardi Hastings in simple terms?

Why does Mardi Hastings matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mardi Hastings?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mardi Hastings.