Syllabus

OCW Scholar

Prerequisites

The prerequisites for this course are 18.02 Multivariable Calculus and 8.02 Physics II: Electricity and Magnetism

Course Overview

In this course, you will learn about a broad range of phenomena characterized by the presence of vibrations and waves.

What are vibrations? Many physical systems vibrate or oscillate when something disrupts their equilibrium. Think of what happens when you pull a mass attached to a spring or push a pendulum in a certain direction. The mass bounces up and down. The pendulum swings back and forth. But even these simple phenomena can respond in complicated and counterintuitive ways when subjected to forces known in physics as damping and driving. Combining several pendulums or springs can lead to even more unexpected motions. You will see how physics can describe these motions mathematically.

Extended physical systems that have been made to vibrate, like a long stretched string on a guitar, cannot return to their state of equilibrium without exerting forces on the area around them. These forces then lead to the phenomenon of waves, disturbances that propagate through a medium. The vibrating guitar string causes a sound wave to propagate through the air. In this course you will also learn to describe these phenomena and to understand what happens when media of different characteristics interact (like guitar strings of different density) or reach an endpoint (like ocean waves colliding with the shore).

Among the most fascinating phenomena examined in the course are electromagnetic waves. EM waves have many properties similar to the waves we experience in everyday life, but the underlying physics of EM waves is profoundly different. Instead of a local disturbance exerting a force on adjoining regions, changing magnetic fields create electric fields (as quantified by Faraday's Law), and changing electric fields create magnetic fields (as quantified by Maxwell's extension of Ampere's Law). The final section of the course is devoted to the study of these waves and to understanding what happens when EM waves move from one material into another or interact with conducting materials such as metals.

Course Goals

This course has two complementary goals. The first is to provide you with the concepts and mathematical tools necessary to understand and explain a broad range of vibrations and waves. This will allow you to gain a deeper appreciation for the true nature and beauty of phenomena like music and rainbows, which all of us observe or experience every day.

The second goal is to provide you with the skill of using a broad range of techniques that can greatly simplify the analysis and solution of complex systems. These techniques include complex numbers, combinations of oscillatory and exponentially decaying functions, resonance, normal modes, Cramer's rule for solving several equations in several variables, boundary conditions, general wave equations, Fourier decomposition, dispersive and non-dispersive media, phase and group velocities, sound cavities and wave guides, polarization, Doppler effect, reflection and refraction, Fresnel's equation for transmission and reflection, total internal reflection, constructive and destructive interference, and diffraction.

You will have succeeded in the course if you can understand at a fundamental level, and therefore actually "see" for the first time, phenomena spanning the range from something as simple as pushing a child on a swing to something as seemingly complicated as a double rainbow.

Course Format and Components

This OCW Scholar course is based upon Professor Walter Lewin's 8.03 Physics III: Vibrations and Waves course published on the OCW website. It includes his complete set of 23 video lectures recorded at MIT in the Fall of 2004. Additional materials have been developed specifically for this OCW Scholar course, including:

Viewing Notes aligned with the lecture videos
Concept Questions to gauge your understanding of and progress through the materials
Problem Solving Help Videos providing step-by-step solutions to sample problems

The following textbooks were used when this course was taught on the MIT campus:

French, A. P. Vibrations and Waves. The M.I.T. Introductory Physics Series. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1971. ISBN-10: 0393099369; ISBN-13: 9780393099362

Bekefi, George, and Alan H. Barrett. Electromagnetic Vibrations, Waves, and Radiation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977. ISBN: 9780262520478. [Preview with Google Books]

Both books will be useful but not required for users to benefit from this OCW Scholar course.

MIT students spend about 150–200 hours learning Vibrations and Waves in the on-campus version of this course. That number comes from a combination of attending lectures and recitations and studying independently. It's difficult to estimate how long it will take you to complete all of the modules in this particular course because it's never been taught at MIT in this format. But you can probably expect to spend 3 to 4 hours on practice problems, readings and assessment for each hour of lecture video you watch.

Meet the Team

Professor Walter Lewin got his PhD in Nuclear Physics at the Technical University in Delft, the Netherlands in 1965. He joined the Physics faculty at MIT in 1966. Prof. Lewin is well-known at MIT and beyond for his dynamic and engaging lecture style. His online lectures are watched by about 2 million people yearly. Lewin has received five teaching awards. He is the only MIT Professor featured in "The Best 300 Professors" of The Princeton Review. In 2011, Professor Lewin co-authored with Warren Goldstein the book For the Love of Physics (Free Press, Simon & Schuster).

Professor Wit Busza joined MIT in 1969 and has been teaching and doing research ever since. He has received several awards for his outstanding teaching, including The School of Science Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at MIT (1993). He was also recognized as one of MIT's best teachers and mentors by being appointed a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow in 1995. Professor Busza developed and recorded the problem-solving videos for this OCW Scholar course.

Dr. George S.F. Stephans is a Senior Lecturer in the Physics Department at MIT and a Senior Research Scientist in the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science. His research work involves collisions of very high-energy atomic nuclei. His most recent experiments use the CMS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. He has many years of experience teaching physics classes at MIT. Dr. Stephans acted as Editor-in-Chief of this OCW Scholar course, contributing content as well as editorial expertise.

Martin Connors is Professor of Space Science and Physics at Canada's Athabasca University which has online, for-credit, physics courses that use Prof. Lewin’s video lectures. He has been a Visiting Professor of Earth and Space Sciences at UCLA. His interests include auroras and asteroids as well as modern methods in science teaching. He wrote the viewing notes and concept questions for this OCW Scholar Course.