Ever wondered what the Classical Wave Equation is all about? Well now you can find out!

Hey everyone, I'm back with another video. This time, I'm breaking down the Classical Wave Equation for you, because I really enjoy making these videos where I explain what a physics equation is trying to tell us.

The Classical Wave Equation describes the behaviour of waves (duh) as they move through space and time. In this video we discuss one particular solution of the wave equation in detail sinusoidal waves. Remember though, that there are other solutions to the wave equation, such as spherical waves. However, sinusoidal waves make the wave equation the easiest to explain in my opinion.

We will first learn about differentiation, which is a very important subsection of calculus. We will learn about this because the Wave Equation is known as a differential equation. Well technically, the equation being discussed in this video is a onedimensional secondorder linear partial differential equation. It might seem like I'm just throwing jargon at you, but in this video I will describe exactly what each bit of that description means. And the best part is, you don't need to be studying physics or mathematics at university to understand it! If I've made this video correctly, then you should be able to understand it if you've studied mathematics or physics up to high school level.

We will learn about differentiation in this video because differentiation is heavily featured in the wave equation. We take an equation that describes the wave we happen to be studying, and differentiate it with respect to both time and position. We do this until we can test if our wave obeys the rules set down by the wave equation (of sorts). If it does, then our wave is said to "obey" the wave equation.

The wave equation describes lots of classical waves, such as light waves, sound waves, mechanical waves, etc. However, there are many other kinds of wave equation the Schrodinger Equation being a good example. The Classical Wave Equation discussed in this video only deals with the subset of waves known about long before the advent of Special Relativity or Quantum Mechanics.

With all of that being said, if you have any questions, please do let me know in the comments section down below. I will try to answer as many as possible.

If you enjoyed this video, please do leave a thumbs up and subscribe for more fun physics content. Hit that bell button if you want to be notified every time I upload. Follow me on Instagram @parthvlogs to see what I get up to on a more daytoday basis.