Talk:Natural frequency

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The descriptions in this article are quite repetitive and messy. A complete rewrite should be considered. MagicWord (talk) 23:23, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Change article into redirect?

Isn't this page similair to the Fundamental frequency page? that doesn't have the electrical domain part, but is a lot more structured.

Might it be better to change this page into a redirect into the other page, merging the good parts (if any)? Rmvandijk (talk) 08:21, 15 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, they are completely different phenomena. SpinningSpark 14:27, 15 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree these should be merged. As far as I am aware, these are not completely different phenomena. Natural frequency is a ~slang~ for the first mode fundamental frequency. PearlRock (talk) 20:51, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Where do you get that idea from? Do you have any sources? As the article says, natural frequency is the frequency a system will oscillate in the absence of a driving force. It is a term widely used, certainly in electrical engineering, and I believe elsewhere. It is not slang and has a precise meaning. On the other hand fundamental frequency is the lowest frequency in a Fourier analysis of an oscillation – any oscillation. You will have great difficulty arguing these are the same, especially as they can be demonstrated to be numerically different in specific cases. SpinningSpark 23:37, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the two aren't identical, however there are now two short articles. I think that combining the two into one more comprehensive article could improve them (it). Rmvandijk (talk) 08:15, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, that is such a bad idea. Not only are they not the same thing, they are completely different things. One cannot in any rational way maintain that one is a subset of the other or one is a variation of the other, or even that one concept can be derived from the other. You would just have two separate articles on the same page under different headings. That, in fact, is against guidelines and someone would, quite rightly, come along and split them again. SpinningSpark 12:52, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is you're basically saying that natural frequency is a broader term than Fundamental frequency, which may be true, but the Fundamental frequency page is more descriptive than this one despite the subject scope. In fact, the Fundamental frequency page talks about high-order natural frequencies as you describe, except that article calls them "overtones"! Overtone appears to be specific to sound waves and not a generalized term for all industries. In regards to that article, that is probably a poor choice of words. It'd be nice if these articles at least mentioned this information in terms of eigenmodes an eigenfrequencies too. My work is in vibrations analysis, and we use the term, eigenmodes/frequencies. I've found these terms are less ambiguous, and as a result I have since stopped using the term natural/fundamental frequency in my work. PearlRock (talk) 07:53, 12 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You claim that I'm "basically saying that natural frequency is a broader term than fundamental frequency". I am saying no such thing and I have no idea how you can read that into my post. I am not saying one is a subset of the other. I am saying they are two entirely different phenomena. Let's take a concrete example in electrical engineering with which I am familiar, the LC circuit. Now if we make L=1/200π and C=1/200π then the natural frequency of oscillation of the system is 100 Hz. If we drive the circuit from a generator at 100 Hz it will resonate at that frequency. If we drive the circuit with a 100 Hz square wave generator the driving signal will contain the 100 Hz fundamental frequency (fundamental as defined in the fundamental frequency article) and, as is well known, harmonics (overtones) at 300 Hz, 500 Hz etc. These harmonics, however, are not natural frequencies of the LC circuit. If we change the driving frequency to something the circuit will not resonate with at all, say 128 Hz, then none of the fundamental (128 Hz) or harmonic (384 Hz, 640 Hz etc) frequencies are natural frequencies of the LC system. Even if we change the system to one that does have multiple natural resonances, such as a short length of tranmsission line, it is still the case (with the same driving conditions) that the set of natural frequencies of the system (100 Hz, 300 Hz, 500 Hz ...) does not intersect the set of harmonic frequencies of the driving waveform (128 Hz, 384 Hz, 640 Hz ...), at least not until 3.2 kHz.

Now it may be that there is a different meaning to fundamental frequency used in some fields: the lowest frequency of natural oscillation of a system. But that is different from the definition given in the fundamental frequency article and the two should not be mixed together in the same article. Wikipedia has one page per topic, and if two topics need the same title that is handled with disambiguation. On the issue of the fundamental frequency article discussing overtones, it doesn't. They are only mentioned once in the caption to the diagram. In my opinion that diagram does not belong there. This article (natural frequency) is the better place for it. If that is what this discussion is about then that may be the solution. SpinningSpark 17:02, 12 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]