The beautiful sine wave turns out to have a huge number of practical applications, from the motion of springs, to waves in the sea, to sound waves, light waves and more. It is curious that the function which defines the sine wave, sin(x), comes from comparing the lengths of sides in right-angled triangles – just about the least curvy things you could imagine. 

How does that concept result in the lovely curve of the sine wave?

A lecture by Sarah Hart

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/sine-wave

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

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