Tacoma Narrows Bridge (1940) Billah and Scanlan (1991) reported that in fact, many physics textbooks (for example Resnick et al. and Tipler et al.) wrongly explain that the cause of the failure of the Tacoma Narrows bridge was externally forced mechanical resonance. Resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate at larger amplitudes at certain frequencies, known as the system's natural frequencies. At these frequencies, even relatively small periodic driving forces can produce large amplitude vibrations, because the system stores energy. For example, a child using a swing realizes that if the pushes are properly timed, the swing can move with a very
Amplitude that reference. Semi-amplitude means 1/2(Half) of the peak-to-peak amplitude. Some scientists use "amplitude" or "peak amplitude" to mean semi-amplitude. It is the most widely used measure of orbital wobble in astronomy and the measurement of small radial velocity semi-amplitudes of nearby stars is important in the search for exoplanets (see Doppler spectroscopy). Root mean square (RMS) amplitude is used especially in electrical engineering: the RMS is defined as the square root of the mean over time of the square of the vertical distance of the graph from the rest state; i.e. the RMS of the AC waveform (with no DC