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In 1966, William Russell Abel, Ansel Cochran Anderson and John Charles Wheatley sent acoustic waves through bulk liquid helium-3 at $0.32\mathrm{atm}$ and frequencies $15.4$ and $45.5\mathrm{MHz}$. A quartz delay line and receiving acoustic transducer bounded a $0.138\mathrm{mm}$ liquid gap; shielding reduced electrical pickup. Powdered cerium magnesium nitrate provided magnetic thermometry during a slow warm-up. Pulse amplitudes measured acoustic attenuation; phase difference comparison measured velocity. Calibration pulses checked gain; early received cycles avoided multiple reflections. On cooling through a maximum, acoustic attenuation changed from $\alpha \propto {\omega }^2/T^{\ast 2}$ to $\alpha \propto T^{\ast 2}$ with a velocity shift supporting zero sound; $T^{\ast }$ is their magnetic temperature scale. Weak acoustic attenuation was harder to resolve.^[ref]

This 1966 test followed Lev Landau's 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics.^[ref]

The experiment concerned normal liquid helium-3, distinct from the later discovery of superfluid helium-3.^[ref] Landau's original papers are theoretical calculations, not reports of an apparatus.

Acoustic attenuation is a reduction of a propagating sound signal beyond that attributed to the specified geometric spreading. Absorption converts acoustic energy to other forms, while scattering redirects it away from the receiving path. The inferred attenuation therefore depends on what the detector collects and how the spreading reference is defined.

For a plane wave with pressure amplitude $p(x)=p(0)e^{-\alpha x}$, the corresponding sound intensity decays as $I(x)=I(0)e^{-2\alpha x}$ in a fixed medium. An attenuation coefficient defined from intensity has twice the numerical value of this amplitude coefficient. Measuring the signal at several separations can estimate the slope, provided the source response, reflections and geometric corrections are controlled.

Ultrasonography forms medical images using ultrasound. In pulse-echo imaging, a piezoelectric transducer emits a short acoustic pulse and receives echoes from changes in acoustic impedance. If an echo returns after time $\Delta t$ from a reflector at distance $d$ in a uniform medium with sound speed $c$, the round trip gives $d=c\Delta t/2$. Scanning the beam assembles spatial information from many such measurements.^[ref]

A water-tank experiment with two reflectors at known separations tests the depth calculation without biological interpretation. An incorrect assumed sound speed changes the inferred depths; overlapping pulses limit the separation of nearby reflectors. In tissue, acoustic attenuation, scattering and the geometry of the beam further affect the image. These mechanisms explain why the displayed anatomy depends on both physical propagation and the acquisition model.

Time reversal acoustics uses recorded sound to send a field back toward the region that originally emitted it. An array of acoustic transducers records a pulse at multiple positions, reverses each recording in time, and emits the reversed signals from the corresponding positions. In a stationary reciprocal medium, the different paths can then contribute coherently near the original source.

A laboratory demonstration places a short-pulse source in a tank, records it at an array, removes or silences that source, and re-emits the reversed records. Mapping the returning pressure pulse tests the refocusing directly. Multiple propagation paths need not prevent focusing if they remain stable and are recorded; they can supply additional path diversity. Finite recording duration, limited bandwidth, incomplete spatial coverage and acoustic attenuation limit the reconstruction. Reversing recordings therefore implements a particular wave-control experiment, rather than undoing every dissipative process in the medium.