General Discussions of Waves

This introductory chapter discusses wave characteristics and related terminologies in general. We first view waves as a motion of a spatial pattern (a snapshot) of an entity on the time axis and as a temporal oscillation on the spatial axis. This spatiotemporal behavior leads to the concept of phase velocity, which characterizes the medium that the wave propagates through. In the second half of the chapter, we discuss some mathematical aspects of wave dynamics. We derive wave equations from the spatiotemporal characteristics and discuss their solutions in general.