Fourier Transformation: an Animated GIF Here I found the animated GIF below. I don't get it! Would someone explain it please?


You have a function. It is like a box! Or maybe a skyscraper.
You want to approximate such a function, but all you have is a bag of sinusoids of different frequencies. Perhaps, if you add these sinusoids together, you can approximate the function.
You reach into your bag, and pull out of a bunch of sinusoids and add them all together. If you pick the right amplitude for each one, you get something that looks like your original function!
Now, you ask yourself, "what if I arranged these sinusoids that I used by increasing frequency, and plotted the amplitude of each one? What would it look like?"
Now you have a Fourier transform!
