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 08 - Translation Symmetry |
Prof. Lee introduces the concept of "boundary conditions" which enables us to solve a finite system using the general solution of an infinitely long system. In the end of the lecture, a wave equation is derived in the continuous limit.
| References |
| Lecture 8 - Translation Symmetry Topics: Symmetry. Infinitely Long System. Boundary Conditions. Wave Equations. Lecture Notes. Textbook Reading. |
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