  We present the exact finite reduction of a class of nonlinearly perturbed
wave equations, based on the Amann-Conley-Zehnder paradigm. By solving an
inverse eigenvalue problem, we establish an equivalence between the spectral
finite description derived from A-C-Z and a discrete mechanical model, a well
definite finite spring-mass system. By doing so, we decrypt the abstract
information encoded in the finite reduction and obtain a physically sound proxy
for the continuous problem.
