Reddit mentions: The best waves & wave mechanics books

Alright, I feel very excited to answer this question mainly because I always had a deep love for physics and maths.

Now the first thing to remember is that, you need to explore for yourself. Think of these subjects as the oceans, or space. Even though we know somethings about them, we do not know everything, and are always in uncharted territory.

You need to try and explore and find out which topics you like more, what arouses your curiosity, is it nuclear physics? is it astronomy? is it quantum mechanics?

The same goes for maths, do you like abstract maths, set theory? game theory? Statistical maths?

I love quantum mechanics and for me, these were the best books to arouse my curiosity for the subject.

In search of Schrodingers cat (https://www.amazon.in/Search-Schrodingers-Cat-Updated/dp/0552125555)

and

The trouble with physics (this is a vaster book talking about string theory as well) (https://www.amazon.in/Trouble-Physics-String-Theory-Science/dp/0141018356/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+trouble+with+physics&qid=1557578480&s=books&sr=1-1)

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Moreover, try to look for online resources. One thing that I loved doing was looking at everyday objects and then wondering how they work.

And then just googling, "How blank works?"

for example, how do bulbs and tubelights work? How does a car engine work? Why is the sky blue? Think of the most absurd questions that you can ask yourself. Don't be afraid if they sound stupid.

Also, I would suggest you become a member of your local library if possible. Libraries are a great resource to find interests and hobbies.

And, tell your family and teachers too. Just tell them that you are interested in so and so topics and ask them for help.

I look forward to seeing you in the academic world.

If you ever need advice or help, then feel free to PM me.

P.S. I don't really care about age, but just in case you wish to know, I am 19.

Think of the dimensions as fundamental parameters, conditions that describe the underlying basic qualities of the particles. They're not properties, like density, so that description doesn't really properly explain them either.

Michiu Kaku, who catches a lot of crap for not dismissing some ideas which are pretty clearly woo, is nonetheless a really great theoretical physicist. His book Hyperspace gives some great explanation of higher dimensions than I can summarize here. There is an easily-Googleable PDF of the book available for free, but I recommend buying it and supporting the author and his work, and the willingness of publishers to commission scientific books for laymen like this one.

You mean the harmonics? They have different amplitudes because there is less energy available to higher harmonics.

Finding the amplitude of a periodic function (which is what acoustic waves are) is a matter of studying the wave equation and how infinite series can be used to describe complex waveforms. If you really want to understand this, you're going to have to study the physics of wave phenomena. I don't think Reddit is the place to do this, and even if it was I just don't have the time to explain it to you. Sorry.

That being said, I can recommend books to you. The standard text for many physics departments (MIT still uses it) is Vibrations and Waves by A.P. French. A more general book about musical acoustics is Benade's Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics.

You should probably start with the latter and not the former.

I gathered as much. For some reason our class started from the path integral formalism, which I felt gave me a really good insight into the connections between quantum and classical realms. No one ever bothered to explain what any of these parameters we were integrating were, not even the book.... or if it did I missed it why trying to wrap my head around the mathematics. (we used this book, http://www.amazon.com/Field-Theory-Modern-Frontiers-Physics/dp/0201304503 and the author was the professor) The only thing I got from that was a really good appreciation for classical mechanics and a true insight to an genius people like Dirac actually were. I still need to wrap my head around the concept of a integrating over all field configurations, but hopefully I can get this now.

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen was an eye-opener for me. I read it years ago, and haven't read the updated version, but I did find that one interesting.

Also Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace" is thoroughly entertaining and educational.

We used this one in my Waves and Optics course. It's excellent, I'd highly recommend it.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

The Hole In The Universe

Universe on a T-Shirt

Light Years

Before The Big Bang

Why Does e=mc^2? (and why should we care?)

Your Inner Fish (about evolution)

And just because it was one of my first pop science books, I'll add The Telescope. Which is of course, about telescopes. It's a lot more interesting than it sounds!

/u/bgcamroux mentions French's book, which is part of an MIT textbook series. UC Berkeley also has a series, and their "waves book" is Waves.
If you're looking for something lighter than a textbook, I like Pierce's Almost All About Waves

I'll try suggesting something different - how about Wave Phenomena by Towne. You can pick up this paperback as a used copy cheap. It focuses on Fourier transforms and the mathematical derivations. More math oriented and it is right at your level as well.

Theres a pauli lecture series book on waves.
Edit: Here: http://www.amazon.com/Wave-Mechanics-Volume-Lectures-Physics/dp/0486414620

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Wave-Phenomena-Akira-Hirose/dp/1575242311

Electromagnetic Wave Theory $2,000

Introduction to Physics of Waves is decent for beginner/intermediate stuff.

Reminds me of Plato's Allegory of the Cave and HyperSpace

This conversation is futile because you're obviously a braindead empiricist and materialist, totally irrational, totally lacking in reason and logic, to the point where Hume of all people is who you advocate for.

>Needed some comedy to brighten up the disappointment.

Why are you disappointed? Is it because you have no fucking clue what Truth is, what noumenal reality is, since you have rejected reason itself, rejected the greatest genius in human history (Leibniz), and rejected ontological mathematics -- without even understanding the first thing about it, naturally. How absurd and irrational is that?

Only a Mandarin empiricist and Ortega mediocrity would behave the way you do.

>Ortega wrote, “But the present-day writer, when he takes his pen in hand to treat a subject which he has studied deeply, has to bear in mind that the average reader, who has never concerned himself with this subject, if he reads does so with the view, not of learning something from the writer, but rather, of pronouncing judgment on him when he is not in agreement with the commonplaces that the said reader carries in his head.”

https://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Effect-Crisis-Meaning-ebook/dp/B07VHTRDTJ

Yes, existence is fundamentally imbued with purpose, and dialectical evolution -- it is 'built in' to each mathematical Leibnizian monad. The PSR, expressed mathematically as Euler's Formula (and with Occam's Razor as an obvious corollary) governs all the objective, a priori, mathematical laws of the universe. All of ontological mathematics stems from the PSR, as does all of "physics" (which is just a fallacious sensory interpretation of the underlying mathematics).

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Man-Knew-Everything-Book-ebook/dp/B008LHYVX6

The PSR is a "bold assertion"? Objective reason is a bold assertion? Well, you can reject the PSR all you want, but that means ipso facto that you have chosen to be irrational, which means that there's no point you advancing any kind of rational argument, is there? You can't use reason to argue against reason. That would be absurd.

>"Atheism is a strange, irrational cult. Here’s a simple challenge to all atheists. Rationally prove that eternal minds do not exist. Rationally prove that immaterial singularities do not exist. Rationally prove that Fourier frequency domains do not exist. If you are an atheist and you cannot do so then you are just another hopeless, irrational person of faith that rules out rationalist conclusions because they do not conform to your irrational belief system. You are another of the idiots that reads tea leaves rather than using reason and logic. You imagine that you have some rational comprehension of ultimate reality even though you reject the Principle of Sufficient Reason and Occam’s razor. How irrational is that?
>
>The object that is beyond the ability of the atheist to understand is the eternal mathematical singularity. This object rationally refutes atheism, but atheists are too stupid to realize it. They have staked their entire worldview on the non-existence of singularities, and they are 100% wrong. The PSR rationally proves the existence of mathematical singularities and there is nothing rational that any atheist can do to refute the PSR. The only weapon they have to use against it is their irrational faith in a universe where things allegedly happen for no reason, purposelessly, randomly, and subject to an uncertainty principle.
>
>This is the sort of drivel they believe is “rational”. Any attempt to argue against the PSR is of course inherently and automatically irrational. The task of trying to use reason to defeat reason is the ultimate self-defeating and self-contradicting undertaking.
>
>Atheists belong to the bizarre cult of non-thinkers that imagine they are rational even though they dismiss the PSR as nonsense and thus accept the Principle of No Sufficient Reason. They belong to the forces of irrationalism that oppose the PSR.
>
>You cannot use reason to attack the PSR. You can use reason only to defend it. Atheists are no friends of reason and logic. Their central concept of reality is empiricist, not rationalist. Their central activity is empirical observation, not rational consideration of the consequences of the eternal PSR. They are mired in the temporal and contingent and reject the eternal and necessary. They despise the a priori and accept only the a posteriori." - Dr. Thomas Stark, Castalia: The Citadel of Reason (The Truth Series Book 7)

https://www.amazon.com/Castalia-Citadel-Reason-Truth-Book-ebook/dp/B079KP9Y9M

Learn about reason and the PSR:

https://www.amazon.com/Causation-Principle-Sufficient-Reason-Book-ebook/dp/B00P89UES6

Learn about ontological mathematics:

https://www.amazon.com/Ontological-Mathematics-Curious-Introduction-Thinking-ebook/dp/B07TNRK7MK

Maybe when you've studied and learned something (i.e. Truth, reason, ontological mathematics) rather than 'dismissing it without a second thought' (the exact effect Ortega predicted!), and when you no longer reject the PSR (by which you out yourself as a totally irrational empiricist), then I can actually take you seriously.