Ideal Vibrating String

Figure 6.1: The ideal vibrating string.

The ideal vibrating string is depicted in Fig.6.1. It is assumed to be perfectly flexible and elastic. Once ``plucked,'' it will vibrate forever in one plane as an energy conserving system. The mathematical theory of string vibration is considered in §B.6 and Appendix C. For present purposes, we only need some basic definitions and results.