Waves form an extremely important part of physics, but they do not seem to be an independent study like electromagnetism or mechanics. Instead the effects of waves are noticed in nearly all branches of physics.

Why would you be interested in studying this collective jumble of transmitting perturbations? Maybe because everything that you have ever witnessed was a wave once. The things you see are light waves, the things you hear are sound waves, and everything that you sense moves through your nerves in the form of electrochemical waves.

We will start with the fundamentals of waves: harmonic motion.

Image by Asimina Nteliou from Pixabay is licensed under CC0