Before my meanderings in the music department as a non-music major and before my inevitable fall to a major in the arts, I started life as a baby physics major. I wish I could claim that I left early but I ended up wasting three years of my life (and nearly sixty credits) in pursuit of a physics degree that would not be (they canceled the astrophysics major here the year I tried to apply to it anyways). Yet, I still find use for the math and science classes on occasion and . . . well . . . I thought I might use this blog to explore one thing I have heard conversed about in class. That is the formation of a square wave from the more normal sine waves we have been working with.
Now when modifying the tone of a sinusoid, we end up changing the wave itself. This is not some great revelation as any high school graduate could tell you a change in pitch is a change in frequency. Yet, to modulate a sine wave into a square one requires instead a modulation in amplitude not frequency. Here is another handy video (I post a lot of these) showing what I mean by using a Fourier transformation to create the wave from the normal sine. As the video progresses, you will see that the period (the section of the wave that does not repeat or the "beginning" to the "end") of the wave does not change but instead the amplitude (that is the peak (top) and trough(bottom) of the wave) changes. It becomes more ripple-y. These ripples increase in fluctuation as the signal advances to represent a more square or flat line. As the wave approaches infinity, the squareness of the wave approaches perfection. Neat stuff, huh?
PS - I hope I made this easy to understand so any fault in understanding is a fault in my explanation.
PPS - I hope people check out the other video on Fourier Transformations. It's really well done.
PPPS - I hope Dr. Twombly or some other kind soul might fix any errors in this post if they should arise.
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