Waves

• Introduction to Waves
• Waves are all around us.
• Waves on strings
• Sound waves in air
  • The concept of acoustic particles
• Plane waves
• Waves in solids
• Wave equations
  • What is a 2nd order PDE?
• Review of partial derivatives
• Factoring the 1-D wave equation
• Forward and backward wave solutions
  • Testing your skills. (OPTIONAL)
    • Solutions
• The 3-D wave equation for air.
  • Other fluid media.
• The 2-D wave equation for a membrane.
  • What is a good example of a membrane?
• Introduction to MATLAB
• Getting into and out of MATLAB
• MATLAB as a calculator
• Arrays in MATLAB
  • Comparison to Fortran and C
• Array calculations
• Plots of functions
• Dressing up your plots
• Reading and writing external files
• Visualizing wave equation solutions in MATLAB
  • Check yourself by this example.