BharatNotes Resonance
nounUsage in a UPSC answer
A welfare scheme acquires durability not merely from its fiscal outlay but from its moral resonance with the lived aspirations of the poor, for policies that fail to strike a chord in the public conscience seldom outlast the governments that author them.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Word Family
resonate (v), resonant (adj), resonantly (adv), resonator (n), resonating (v pres.p)
Root
Latin resonāre = to resound; re- = again + sonāre = to sound; resonantia = echo
Etymology
From Latin resonantia (echo), from resonāre (to resound), from re- (again) + sonāre (to sound).
Memory Hook
Re-SOUND: from Latin re- + sonare, "to sound again" — a note, or an idea, that keeps sounding and stays with you long after it is struck.
How This Word Works in UPSC Writing
The large-amplitude response a system gives when driven at or very near its own natural frequency, because energy transfer from the driver to the system becomes maximally efficient and small repeated inputs accumulate instead of cancelling. The everyday demonstration is a swing, which rises high when pushed in time with its own rhythm and barely moves when pushed arbitrarily, and the classic laboratory case is a tuning fork setting an identical fork vibrating across a bench without contact. Its destructive potential is why soldiers are ordered to break step when crossing a bridge, so that their footfall cannot match the structure's natural frequency. Its constructive applications are just as wide: a radio or television is tuned by matching a circuit's resonant frequency to the desired station, magnetic resonance imaging works on nuclear magnetic resonance, and every wind instrument sounds through a resonating air column.
Don’t Confuse It With
Resonance is the special case in which the driving frequency matches the natural frequency, the frequency at which a system oscillates when disturbed and left alone. Forced vibration is oscillation at any imposed frequency, of which resonance is one instance. Damping removes energy from the system and limits the amplitude that resonance can build up to, which is why real systems do not grow without bound. Note that resonance in chemistry means something entirely unrelated, the delocalisation of electrons across several contributing structures, with no vibration involved.
Hindi Meaning
अनुनाद (anunād); प्राकृतिक आवृत्ति for natural frequency.
Common Questions
- What is resonance?
- The condition in which a system is driven at its own natural frequency and responds with an unusually large amplitude of vibration.
- Why are soldiers told to break step when crossing a bridge?
- So that the rhythm of their marching cannot coincide with the bridge's natural frequency and build up dangerously large oscillations through resonance.
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