What are the characteristics of waves?

Answer 1

Waves transfer energy. Energy is the ability to do work or cause change. A wave is temporary in other words the waves don't last long. Waves always travel through a medium. The mediums can be solid, liquid, or gas. All the waves that need a medium to transfer energy are called mechanical waves. There are some kinds of waves that can travel without a medium. They are called electromagnetic waves. Mechanical waves are produced when the medium starts vibrating. To vibrate is to move up and down or back and forth repeatedly.

There are two kind of mechanical waves. They are longitudinal waves and transverse waves. Transverse waves move the medium at a right angle to the direction the wave is moving. The transverse waves have crests and troughs. The crest is the highest part of a of the wave and the trough is the lower part of the wave. The longitudinal waves move the medium parallel to the direction the wave is moving. Longitudinal waves have compressions and rare fractions. The compression in a longitudinal wave in the part where the particles are close together, rarefaction is when the particles are spread out. A longitudinal wave is like a wave in the springs and the transverse waves are like the waves that you can make with a rope.

The figure above shows the amplitude and wavelength of the transverse wave. The amplitude is the distance from the medium to the crest. The wavelength is the distance between crest to crest or from trough to trough. A wave also has a frequency. A frequency of a wave is the amount of waves that pass through a point in a certain amount of time. The frequency of waves is measured in hertz or Hz.

In a wave speed, frequency, and wavelength are much related. For example to find the speed of a wave you have to multiply wavelength time's frequency. To find wavelength you need to divide speed divided by frequency. To find the frequency you divide speed divided by wavelength.

Waves can bounce back when they hit a surface. Reflection is when an object bounce back when it hits a surface. When an object is reflected the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of the incidence. When a wave goes into a new medium the speed of the wave changes. The change of speed May cause the wave to bend. This is called refraction.

Waves can diffract. Diffract means to spread out or bend around something. In other words waves can spread out everywhere. Like the picture above. When waves meet they interfere. There are two kinds of interference: constructive and destructive interference. Constructive interference is when two identical waves add up to make another kind of wave. The destructive interference is when two opposite waves add up to make another kind of wave.

The Earth can produce some waves that are called seismic waves. Seismic waves are wave that are made by earthquakes. Seismic wave have two kinds of waves S waves and P waves. Seismic waves that are longitudinal waves are the P waves. The seismic waves that are transverse waves are the S waves. Surface waves are waves that are both transverse waves and longitudinal waves that travel on the surface of their medium. Earthquakes under water can make a big surface waves that we know as tsunamis. Tsunamis are waves that can travel really far.

Using a seismograph, you can know that an earthquake is coming. A seismograph is an instrument that is used to see the vibration on earth or on an object.

Waves are formed by disturbance of particles of the medium. It may be longitudinal or mechanical.

In mathematics and science, a wave is a disturbance that travels through space and time, usually accompanied by the transfer of energy. Waves travel and the wave motion transfers energy from one point to another, often with no permanent displacement of the particles of the medium, that is, with little or no associated mass transport. They consist instead of oscillations or vibrations around almost fixed locations. For example, a cork on rippling water will bob up and down, staying in about the same place while the wave itself moves onwards.

One type of wave is a mechanical wave, which propagates through a medium in which the substance of this medium is deformed. The deformation reverses itself owing to restoring forces resulting from its deformation. For example, sound waves propagate via air molecules bumping into their neighbors. This transfers some energy to these neighbors, which will cause a cascade of collisions between neighboring molecules. When air molecules collide with their neighbors, they also bounce away from them (restoring force). This keeps the molecules from continuing to travel in the direction of the wave.

Another type of wave can travel through a vacuum, eg., electromagnetic radiation (including visible light, ultraviolet radiation, infrared radiation, gamma rays, x-rays, and radio waves). This type of wave consists of periodic oscillations in electrical and magnetic fields.

A main distinction is between transverse waves, in which the disturbance occurs in a direction perpendicular (at right angles) to the motion of the wave, and longitudinal waves, in which the disturbance is in the same direction as the wave.

Answer 2

Waves are disturbances that transfer energy without transferring matter. They have amplitude, wavelength, frequency, and speed. Waves can be categorized as mechanical (require a medium to travel through) or electromagnetic (do not require a medium).

Answer 3

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