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
Attenuation distortion Attenuation distortion Attenuation distortion is the distortion of an analog signal that occurs during transmission when the transmission medium does not have a flat frequency response across the bandwidth of the medium or the frequency spectrum of the signal. Attenuation distortion occurs when some frequencies are attenuated more than other frequencies. When an analog signal of constant amplitude across its frequency spectrum suffers attenuation distortion, some frequencies of the received signal arrive being greater in amplitude (louder), relative to other frequencies. To overcome the effects of attenuation distortion, communications circuits have special equalization equipment attached at the ends of the