An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms #Math #Engineering #Sound @jezzamonn

Jez Swanson has created a really cool site describing what Fourier transforms are all about. Fourier transforms can be a bit abstract when taught in math and science classes. This site helps to see things in an interactive manner.

Fourier transforms are a tool used in a whole bunch of different things. This is a explanation of what a Fourier transform does, and some different ways it can useful. And how you can make pretty things with it. I’m going to explain how my animations work, and along the way explain Fourier transforms!

By the end you should have a good idea about

• What a Fourier transform does
• Some practical uses of Fourier transforms
• Some pointless but cool uses of Fourier transforms

The Fourier transform is a way for us to take the combined wave, and get each of the sine waves back out. In this example, you can almost do it in your head, just by looking at the original wave.

Why? Turns out a lot of things in the real world interact based on these sine waves. We usually call them the wave’s frequencies.

The most obvious example is sound – when we hear a sound, we don’t hear that squiggly line, but we hear the different frequencies of the sine waves that make up the sound.

See the entire tutorial for an in-depth look –  the web page is open source and all the code is on GitHub.