#waves

Topics tagged "waves".

• Wave

  A disturbance that travels through a medium while each point of the medium merely oscillates in place — carrying energy without carrying matter.

• Wave Equation

  The partial differential equation whose solutions are anything that travels left or right at a fixed speed without changing shape.

• Waves

  From a single swinging oscillator to ripples that travel, interfere, and carry frequency through space — the bridge between Oscillations and Fourier Analysis.

• Superposition Principle

  When two waves meet, the medium's displacement is simply the sum of what each wave would do alone — the linearity that underlies all of wave physics.

• Standing Wave

  Trap a wave between two fixed ends and it stops traveling — freezing into a pattern of motionless nodes and violently swinging antinodes.

• Interference

  Two overlapping waves reinforce where their crests align and cancel where crest meets trough, painting a fixed pattern of bright and dark fringes.

• Beats

  Two tones of nearly equal frequency drift in and out of step, producing a slow throb whose rate is the difference of the two frequencies.

• Doppler Effect

  Motion of the source or observer compresses the wavefronts ahead and stretches them behind, raising the frequency you receive as it approaches and lowering it as it recedes.

• Dispersion

  When wave speed depends on frequency, a pulse made of many frequencies spreads and reshapes as it travels, and phase and group velocities part ways.

• Wave Packet

  A localized burst of oscillation — a carrier wave wrapped in a traveling envelope — whose envelope and crests move at different speeds in a dispersive medium.