Light and Other Waves

When someone says “waves,” the first thing that may come to mind is the kind of waves that crash onto a beach. Water waves (and waves in air) are complicated, because the waves are moving over complex terrain, experiencing friction and effects of the water’s viscosity and a lot of other things. The equations that govern the realities of water waves and their interaction require that you know about a type of math called partial differential equations, which even scientists and engineers might not work with much until graduate school.