Hi,


Please recommend a good book on wave equations and fourier series / transforms at 3rd year undergraduate level.


Our course text is a bit dense and can be hard to follow - see the course text at <http://www.ouw.co.uk/bin/ouwsdll.dll?COURSEMS324_Mathematics_-_Pure_and_Applied#> - Block 1 - Waves. 


As mentioned below normally the OU texts are very readable but I'm having a bit of trouble with this one.


Thanks!



Good books on wave equations and fourier analysis
Hum, unfortunately I am not familiar with the Open University course, so I am just making a guess based on the course description you linked to. 


Insofar as Fourier Analysis is concerned, a decent text is Stein and Shakarchi's Fourier Analysis: an introduction. ( <http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7562.html> ) You will most likely only need chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5, with a bit of knowledge of 3. One thing good about the book is that it was written as a first course in an analysis sequence, so doesn't assume too much knowledge about real and complex analysis. 


Once you have a bit of Fourier analysis under your belt, reading Korner's Fourier Analysis ( <http://books.google.com/books?id=OcZ5iKsGrmoC&lpg=PP1&dq=korner%20fourier%20analysis&pg=PR8#v=onepage&q=korner%20fourier%20analysis&f=false> ) can be enlightening and give you some feel about what one can do using the machinery. 


For the applications to wave equations as mentioned in the course description, somehow I feel that a textbook in electromagnetism (Jackson or Griffiths) may contain more practical material (look at the sections on standing waves and wave-guides). 


