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Sine wave - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sine wave
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The sine wave or sinusoid is a

mathematical curve that describes a
smooth repetitive oscillation. It is named
after the function sine, of which it is the
graph. It occurs often in pure and
applied mathematics, as well as physics,
engineering, signal processing and many
other fields. Its most basic form as a
function of time (t) is:

The graphs of the sine and cosine functions are sinusoids of different
phases.

where:
A, the amplitude, is the peak deviation of the function from zero.
f, the ordinary frequency, is the number of oscillations (cycles) that occur each second of time.
= 2f, the angular frequency, is the rate of change of the function argument in units of radians per
second
, the phase, specifies (in radians) where in its cycle the oscillation is at t = 0.
When is non-zero, the entire waveform appears to be shifted in time by the amount /
seconds. A negative value represents a delay, and a positive value represents an advance.
The sine wave is important in physics because it retains its waveshape when added to another sine wave of the
same frequency and arbitrary phase and magnitude. It is the only periodic waveform that has this property. This
property leads to its importance in Fourier analysis and makes it acoustically unique.

Contents
1 General form
2 Occurrences
3 Fourier series
4 Traveling and standing waves
5 See also
6 References

General form
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Sine wave - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In general, the function may also have:

a spatial dimension, x (aka position), with wavenumber k
a non-zero center amplitude, D
which looks like this:

The wavenumber is related to the angular frequency by:.

where is the wavelength, f is the frequency, and c is the speed of propagation.

This equation gives a sine wave for a single dimension, thus the generalized equation given above gives the
amplitude of the wave at a position x at time t along a single line. This could, for example, be considered the
value of a wave along a wire.
In two or three spatial dimensions, the same equation describes a travelling plane wave
if position x and wavenumber k are interpreted as vectors, and their product as a dot
product. For more complex waves such as the height of a water wave in a pond after a
stone has been dropped in, more complex equations are needed.

Occurrences
This wave pattern occurs often in nature, including ocean waves, sound waves, and
light waves.
A cosine wave is said to be "sinusoidal", because
which is also a sine wave with a phase-shift of /2. Because of this "head start", it is
often said that the cosine function leads the sine function or the sine lags the cosine.
The human ear can recognize single cosine waves as sounding clear because sine
waves are representations of a single frequency with no harmonics; some sounds that
approximate a pure sine wave are whistling, a crystal glass set to vibrate by running a
wet finger around its rim, and the sound made by a tuning fork.
To the human ear, a sound that is made up of more than one sine wave will either
sound "noisy" or will have detectable harmonics; this may be described as a different
timbre.

Fourier series

The oscillation of
an undamped
spring-mass
system around the
equilibrium is a sine
wave.

Main article: Fourier analysis

In 1822, Joseph Fourier, a French mathematician, discovered that sinusoidal waves can be used as simple
building blocks to describe and approximate any periodic waveform including square waves. Fourier used it as
an analytical tool in the study of waves and heat flow. It is frequently used in signal processing and the statistical
analysis of time series.
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Traveling and standing waves

Since sine waves propagate without changing form in distributed linear systems, they are often used to analyze
wave propagation. Sine waves traveling in two directions can be represented as
and

When two waves having the same

amplitude and frequency, and traveling
in opposite directions, superpose each
other, then a standing wave pattern is
created.

See also
Wave (physics)
Crest (physics)
Fourier transform
Harmonic series (mathematics)
Harmonic series (music)
Helmholtz equation
Instantaneous phase
Pure tone
Sawtooth wave
Sinusoidal model
Simple harmonic motion
Square wave
Triangle wave
Wave equation

Illustrating the cosine wave's fundamental relationship to the circle.

References
Hazewinkel, Michiel, ed. (2001),
"Sinusoid"

Sine, square, triangle, and sawtooth waveforms

(http://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=s085640) , Encyclopedia of Mathematics,

Springer, ISBN 978-1-55608-010-4, http://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=s085640
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sine_wave&oldid=547345213"
Categories: Trigonometry Wave mechanics Waves Waveforms
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