{"title":"A Book of Waves—Stefan Helmreich (Durham, NC, USA: Duke Univ. Press, 2023, 411 pp.)","authors":"Carl Wunsch","doi":"10.1109/MTS.2024.3401778","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The Oxford English Dictionary lists eight distinct meanings for the noun “wave” and 10 for the verb form. Physical phenomena of waves, as known by scientists and engineers, are ubiquitous and include those on water surfaces, in sound, seismology, clouds, electromagnetism, cosmic gravitational radiation, in sand, and so on. In the conventional technical sense, waves almost always have some mathematically stated connection between the wavelength (distance between crests), the phase speed (or frequency), and, sometimes, the amplitude. Various exceptions are known, including solitary waves (solitons) and shock waves. Often the waves are mere propagators of motion, but in other cases, they can transport material as well. With the evolution of the English language, the term “wave” has been invoked to describe a huge variety of phenomena ranging from waves of disease, disorder, and emotion, to hair (“permanent waves”), to crowd behavior in stadiums, to “waving” goodbye, to the World War II women's military WAVES, to the titles of novels—for example, from Virginia Woolf.","PeriodicalId":55016,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Technology and Society Magazine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10568223","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"IEEE Technology and Society Magazine","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10568223/","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ENGINEERING, ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The Oxford English Dictionary lists eight distinct meanings for the noun “wave” and 10 for the verb form. Physical phenomena of waves, as known by scientists and engineers, are ubiquitous and include those on water surfaces, in sound, seismology, clouds, electromagnetism, cosmic gravitational radiation, in sand, and so on. In the conventional technical sense, waves almost always have some mathematically stated connection between the wavelength (distance between crests), the phase speed (or frequency), and, sometimes, the amplitude. Various exceptions are known, including solitary waves (solitons) and shock waves. Often the waves are mere propagators of motion, but in other cases, they can transport material as well. With the evolution of the English language, the term “wave” has been invoked to describe a huge variety of phenomena ranging from waves of disease, disorder, and emotion, to hair (“permanent waves”), to crowd behavior in stadiums, to “waving” goodbye, to the World War II women's military WAVES, to the titles of novels—for example, from Virginia Woolf.
期刊介绍:
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine invites feature articles (refereed), special articles, and commentaries on topics within the scope of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology, in the broad areas of social implications of electrotechnology, history of electrotechnology, and engineering ethics.