Wave Motion

(This is pure Colombian homework. Typed up by hand and not copy-pasted like the rest of the blog).

When people think of waves, they usually think of waves of water, but there are other sorts of waves, such as radio waves and microwaves. These are part of the electromagnetic spectrum (they are electromagnetic waves). If you're still reading this I'm just gonna put this here to show I didn't just copy and paste this. Electromagnetic waves travel travel in free space at 3*10^8 ms-1.

Waves that move away from a source are called progressive waves. The oscillation of a particle is what creates the wave.

Transverse Waves
The direction of the energy transfer is perpendicular to the direction of the oscillations in a transverse wave. The pattern of oscillation looks like a sine wave.

Examples of transverse waves:
-Water waves
-All of the waves in the electromagnetic spectrum
-Waves on a string

Longitudinal Waves
The direction of energy transfer is parallel to the direction of the oscillations in a longitudinal wave. Longitudinal waves are made up of compression (point where the waves squash together) and rarefaction (point where the waves spread out).

Examples of longitudinal waves:
-Seismic P-waves
-Sound waves


QUESTIONS (pg 137, orange textbook):
1.
How do an oscillation and a wave differ? Hint: Think about the motion at one point in space over all time and motion of all points in space at one time.

2.
A longitudinal wave can be represented by a graph of displacement against time or pressure difference against time. Sketch both of these graphs on the same time axis for a sound wave. How are the two waves the same, and how are they different.

By Arjun