The Physics of Waves

A complete introduction to waves and wave phenomena by a renowned American theorist, this book focuses on three underlying principles - linearity, translation invariance and local interactions. Beginning with the single harmonic oscillator, the book proceeds through standing wave normal modes in increasingly interesting systems. Examples of waves phenomena from familiar waves are used, but the mechanics of waves is developed in a way that can be directly applied to quantum mechanics. An accompanying disk features over 100 animations of various wave phenomena (for IBM and Macintosh).