Content about “

sine wave

”

When waves scatter off many objects, things get incredibly complex.

Ice, food, and invisibility cloaks — meet the maths that links them together!

Dispersion lies at the heart of many dramatic phenomena - explore the maths that explains it!

Ripples on a pond, the swell of ocean waves, your favourite song – these can all be described using sine waves. But how do we describe a sine wave?

From trigonometry to waves.

The answer comes from the physics of waves.

Rock and its use for tools and buildings has shaped human civilisation. Here's an introduction to the maths of rocks.

Many things make a noise when you hit them, but not many are commonly used to play music — why is that? Jim Woodhouse looks at harmonic and not so harmonic frequencies and at how percussion instruments are tuned.

As an electronic musician Oli Freke has always been fascinated by sine waves, so much so that he's created a song based on them for the Geekpop festival, which is currently taking place on the Web. In this article he explores his song, touching on ancient Greek mythology, strange piano tunings and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Frances Elwell looks at the eddies and currents, from the pungent problem of sewage outflow to the search for bodies of people who have fallen into rivers, explaining that fluid mechanics lies behind it all.