I'm trying to identify the meaning of some TeX symbols.
I don't work with it or anything, it just cropped up online and I was wondering if anybody could shed any light on it.
\ddot{x} + \delta \dot{x} + \alpha x + \beta x^3 = \gamma cos(\omega t)
Asked
Active
Viewed 270 times
4
-
2Welcome to TeX.SE. – Peter Grill Jun 04 '16 at 01:08
-
it looks like an ordinary differential equation for an externally driven and damped oscillator – Jun 04 '16 at 06:41
1 Answers
14
Putting your example into a small TeX document (cos corrected to \cos)
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\[
\ddot{x} + \delta \dot{x} + \alpha x + \beta x^3 = \gamma \cos(\omega t)
\]
\end{document}
you have
It is easy to see that \alpha, \beta and so on generate Greek letters, \dot and \ddot provide "accents" that denote the first and second derivative of the variable x with respect to time t, and \cos generates the standard abbreviation for the cosine function.
Przemysław Scherwentke
- 37,268
-
-
There's still a word typo (correted → corrected) -- Since I hardly edit answers, I leave it to http://tex.stackexchange.com/users/26134/przemys%c5%82aw-scherwentke ;-) – Jun 04 '16 at 06:39
-
@ChristianHupfer - Don't be too shy about using your editing rights -- you've very much earned them! :-) – Mico Jun 04 '16 at 07:36
-
2
-
@Mico Thank you! Now it is much better than it was in my poor English. (As
poor Jane's scrofula[Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe]). – Przemysław Scherwentke Jun 04 '16 at 10:52 -
-
@ChristianHupfer - You're most welcome to try your hand at all of my answers, including this one. :-) – Mico Jun 05 '16 at 19:25
-
-