Linked Questions
10 questions linked to/from Why is the wave equation so pervasive?
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Why are sinusoids so common in nature? [duplicate]
When we are introduced to waves in school, we are often presented with a picture of a sinusoid (or a cosinusoid).
Sinusoids can represent the way many physics phenomena behave, still....
Why are ...
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Why are oscillations so ubiquitous in nature? [duplicate]
I'm aware that you can always approximate a potential by a quadratic term. But is this the most 'fundamental' reason for the pervasiveness for oscillations?
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Why are differential equations for fields in physics of order two?
What is the reason for the observation that across the board fields in physics are generally governed by second order (partial) differential equations?
If someone on the street would flat out ask me ...
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Why is the harmonic oscillator so important?
I've been wondering what makes the harmonic oscillator such an important model. What I came up with:
It is a (relatively) simple system, making it a perfect example for physics students to learn ...
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Linearized equations
What is $V_{\alpha\beta}$?
And what is a symmetric, positive definite potential energy matrix?
And why is there a linearized equation like this?
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What properties a medium must have to allow waves to travel?
There are many types of waves - sound waves, water waves, light 'waves' etc.
What are the common properties of the media in which these various types of wave travel? And how these properties enable ...
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Why fields are solutions of waves equations?
This could be extremely trivial but I am having problems figuring it out.
I think I understand properly the difference between waves and fields.
A field is a function valued on space or spacetime ...
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What is the source of the perturbation $h_{\mu\nu}$ in linearized Einstein field equations in vacuo?
In linearized field equations, the metric tensor is writen as $g_{\mu\nu}=\eta_{\mu\nu}+h_{\mu\nu}$, where $|h_{\mu\nu}|\ll 1$ is a small perturbation of the flat Minkowski metric $\eta_{\mu\nu}$ such ...
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What is so fundamental about Waves?
What we learn about physics can usually be divided into two parts: study of Particle or Wave. We later learn wave-particle duality, etc.
Particle is somewhat intuitive, but what's so special about a ...
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Justification for using wave equation for describing a phenomena
I have recently started learning about waves. We didn't really formally describe what a wave is, but instead started by looking at a concrete example namely harmonic sinusoidal waves in 1d.
We then ...
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