This textbook is written for use in any university course related to the physics of waves, wave theory, and electromagnetic waves in departments such as Physics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Mathematics. The only prerequisite knowledge is a course in calculus. This textbook provides a unified treatment of waves that either occur naturally or can be excited and propagated in various media. This includes both longitudinal and transverse waves. The book covers both mechanical and electrical waves, which are normally covered separately due to their differences in physical phenomena. This text focuses more on the similarities of all waves, mechanical orelectromagnetic, and therefore allows the reader to formulate a unified understanding of wave phenomena in its totality. This second edition contains extensive updates and advances in the understanding of wave phenomena since the publication of the first edition (1985). Numerous additional problems are now present and several chapters have been rewritten and combined. This is the first book in the Mario Boella Series on Electromagnetism in Information and Communication. Key features include: A unified treatment of wave phenomena; Numerical techniques using MATLAB; Both mechanical and electrical waves are described; Necessary mathematics required to understand the material summarized within; Only prerequisite is an introductory course in calculus.

Bored during Mass at the cathedral in Pisa, the seventeen-year-old Galileo regarded the chandelier swinging overhead—and remarked, to his great surprise, that the lamp took as many beats to complete an arc when hardly moving as when it was swinging widely. Galileo’s Pendulum tells the story of what this observation meant, and of its profound consequences for science and technology.

The principle of the pendulum’s swing—a property called isochronism—marks a simple yet fundamental system in nature, one that ties the rhythm of time to the very existence of matter in the universe. Roger Newton sets the stage for Galileo’s discovery with a look at biorhythms in living organisms and at early calendars and clocks—contrivances of nature and culture that, however adequate in their time, did not meet the precise requirements of seventeenth-century science and navigation. Galileo’s Pendulum recounts the history of the newly evolving time pieces—from marine chronometers to atomic clocks—based on the pendulum as well as other mechanisms employing the same physical principles, and explains the Newtonian science underlying their function.

The book ranges nimbly from the sciences of sound and light to the astonishing intersection of the pendulum’s oscillations and quantum theory, resulting in new insight into the make-up of the material universe. Covering topics from the invention of time zones to Isaac Newton’s equations of motion, from Pythagoras’s theory of musical harmony to Michael Faraday’s field theory and the development of quantum electrodynamics, Galileo’s Pendulum is an authoritative and engaging tour through time of the most basic all-pervading system in the world.