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Acoustics and Vibration Animations
Daniel A. Russell, Ph.D. Graduate Program in Acoustics The Pennsylvania State University All text and images on this page are ©2004-2011 by Daniel A. Russell and may not used in other web pages or reports without permission. | 
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I haven't figured out exactly what I want to write as an explanation for this animation, but here's a first draft (6/11/02). I created the animation because I wanted to show how circular motion in the complex plane is related to the sine and cosine functions used to describe simple harmonic motion. As a point rotates counterclockwise around a circular path in the complex plane the real component (blue line) oscillates back and forth along the real axis as a cosine function. Meanwhile, the height of the imaginary component (red line) oscillates up and down as a sine function. |