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The wavelength refers to the distance between peaks of something that is periodic - such as sound. It is also the distance between the valleys or nulls. Low frequency waves like sound, are very long (fractions of an inch up to yards) compared to visible light which is has wavelengths in billionths of a meter. The length is determined by how fast the waves travel away from the source (velocity) divided by how fast the waves oscillate as you observe them passing a given point (the frequency in cycles per second). Using the low end of the FM radio band as an example, you have waves which travel in air at roughly light speed (~300 million meters per second) divided by 88 million cycles per second,or MegaHertz (MHz), which gives a wavelength of 3.4 meters. For a given velocity, the higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength is.

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18y ago

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