Difficult studies

Tweet

I'm a music teacher but recently, for the past couple of years, I've been taking online geology courses. You may have seen my posts about volcanoes and earthquakes. Well, right now I'm taking one called "Earthquake Seismology". The first week was fine. Not hard. Second week they start talking about seismograms. Now, I never took physics, and now I am regretting it. My "Monitoring Volcanoes" course included a bunch of physics but I finally got my head around this. So, here's the first paragraph that wiped me out: "A digital signal can be modeled and analyzed using the discrete Fourier theory, which decomposes it in a sum (or integral) of sin or cosine functions with a given period (or frequency), maximum amplitude and phase (relative time shifting). The frequency content of a digital signal is analyzed through the amplitude spectrum, e.g. the amplitude vs the frequency of the sinusoidal functions which compose the signal." Um, okay. I had to look up five words just to kind of get the general idea. Then he gives us an equation (not expecting us to use it but just understand it) changing all those words I just looked up into Greek or English letters... Have you read any books or taken courses in which you had to look up every other word? And also, if anyone can explain sine and cosine to me I'd be forever grateful! Next time I should be able to spout information about how to read seismograms. Maybe.