How Stuff Moves, Part 3: Wave Motion

How Stuff Moves, Part 3: Wave Motion

What Is “How Stuff Moves”?

Mechanics is the study of how things move. It was the first quantitative science to achieve wide power to predict behavior, including things never before directly observed. Newton, Leibniz, and others invented calculus to describe motion and we will find both differential and integral calculus extremely useful throughout this course.

This is the third in a 3-part series of courses that parallels the second-semester mechanics course taught at Harvey Mudd College. Part 3 focuses on the movement of oscillating systems and the propagation of waves (sound, seismic, or surface-water). Part 1 examined linear motion, and Part 2 examined angular motion. This course is an invitation to develop your problem-solving skills and to learn how to apply mathematics to all sorts of problems of the physical world. Learning the rules that govern how stuff moves in the world around us is exciting; using those rules to predict _correctly _something that you haven’t observed means that you really understand something. It‘s a great feeling.