8.03SC Physics III: Vibrations and Waves
8.03SC Physics III: Vibrations and Waves (Fall 2016, MIT OCW). Instructor: Professor Yen-Jie Lee. Vibrations and waves are everywhere. If you take any system and disturb it from a stable equilibrium, the resultant motion will be waves and vibrations. Think of a guitar string - pluck the string, and it vibrates. The sound waves generated make their way to our ears, and we hear the string's sound. Our eyes see what's happening because they receive the electromagnetic waves of the light reflected from the guitar string, so that we can recognize the beautiful sinusoidal waves on the string. In fact, without vibrations and waves, we could not recognize the universe around us at all!
The amazing thing is that we can describe many fascinating phenomena arising from very different physical systems with mathematics. This course will provide you with the concepts and mathematical tools necessary to understand and explain a broad range of vibrations and waves. You will learn that waves come from many interconnected (coupled) objects when they are vibrating together. We will discuss many of these phenomena, along with related topics, including mechanical vibrations and waves, sound waves, electromagnetic waves, optics, and gravitational waves.
(from ocw.mit.edu)
| Lecture 05 - Beat Phenomena |
Prof. Wyslouch shows the solution of two coupled pendula. A very interesting result from the calculation is that beat phenomena could be identified in the motion of the pendula, similar to what one could feel with sound waves.
| References |
| Lecture 5 - Beat Phenomena Topics: Coupled Oscillators. Beat Phenomena. Normal Axis. Lecture Notes. Textbook Reading. Problem Set. |
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