Answer to Question #85566 in Physics for Rinku Rai

Question

The displacement of an oscillator is written as
y(t) = a sin (ωt ± φ)
whereas the equation of a wave is written as
y(x, t) = a sin (ωt − kx)
Highlight the differences between the two.

Answer 1

The main difference between these equations is the dependence on X-variable in second case. We have different values of Y along the X-axis. In the first case T depends only on time but not any other variable.