Sine wave
The sine wave or sinusoid is a mathematical function that describes a smooth repetitive oscillation. It occurs often in pure and applied mathematics, as well as physics, engineering, signal processing and many other fields. Its most basic form as a function of time (t) is:
where:
- A, the amplitude, is the peak deviation of the function from its center position.
- ω, the angular frequency, specifies how many oscillations occur in a unit time interval, in radians per second
-
φ, the phase, specifies where in its cycle the oscillation begins at t = 0.
- When the phase is non-zero, the entire waveform appears to be shifted in time by the amount φ/ω seconds. A negative value represents a delay, and a positive value represents an advance.
The sine wave is important in physics because it retains its waveshape when added to another sine wave of the same frequency and arbitrary phase and magnitude. It is the only periodic waveform that has this property. This property leads to its importance in Fourier analysis and makes it acoustically unique.
