Waves are rythmic disturbances that carry energy but not matter, it can transport energy, without transporting matter from place to place. The properties of a wave are:
- Amplitude: One half the distance between a crest and a trough
- Wavelength: Distance between the tops of the two crests of troughs
- Frequency: number of wavelengths per second
- The further the wavelength the lesser the frequencies will be because the waves will be more spreadout.
- Crest: The top of the wave
- Trough: the bottom, lowest point of a wave
- Medium: the middle point of a wave
Mechanical waves : a type of wave that can travel only through matter
Transverse waves: A type of mechanical wave in which the wave energy cause matter in the medium to move up and down/ back and forth
Compressional waves: A type of wave where the matter moves back and forth with the wave direction.
electromagnetic waves: Can travel through space and matter produced by moving charged particles.
Wave behavior
- Reflection: When a wave strikes an object and bounces off
- Light waves bounce off of something to strike another objects which reflects back into out eyes.
- Refraction: the bending of a wave as it moves from one medium to another
- Difraction: bending of waves around a barrier
- The amount a wave has to ben, the more bending the more difraction
- Interference: The ability of two waves to combine and from a new wave, when they overlap
- When waves meet the crest of one wave overlaps the other, or they bounce off each other (reflect).
Sound waves
Sound waves are the vibrations that are picked up and interpretated by our ears. It can have loudness which is the human perception of how much energy a sound wave carries. The loudness is determined by the amount of energy and number of waves that are exerted. Sound waves also have pitch, how high or low a sound sounds, and echoes, which are reflected sound waves.
Sonar systems are devices that are used to measure distance between it and another object, with echoes the sound wave is released. It is then echoed back and the time it took to return helps determine the distance of something. The longer the time it took for the wave to return the further away the object is. The Doppler effect is the change in frequency that occurs when a source of sound is moving relative to a listener.
Music
Music is something that is all around and we hear probably everyday, but dont ever reallly think about what it really is. Music is a group of sounds that have been made to produce a regular pattern. Every object will vibrate at certain frequencies, and this is their natural frequency, which is determined by the object and what its made out of. More definitions are:
- Renosance: When an object is made to vibrate at tits natural frequencies by describing sound waves.
- Fundalmental frequencies: The lowest frequency produced by the vibration of an object.
- Overtones: higher frequencies
- Reverberation: repeated echoes and sounds
- Eardrum: Membrane that strecheds the ear cannal like a drum head
- Sound waves' vibrations are picked up and detected and depening on the vibratoin our ear interperects a different sound.
Electromagnetic Waves
Electromagnetic waves can travel through space and matter, and is made out of charged particles. Radiant energy is the energy carried by electromagnetic waves. They unlike mechanical waves can travel through space, and used my by humans.
Electromagnetic Spectrum is the entire frequency range of electromagnetic waves. It includes:
- Radio waves: a type of electromagnetic radiation with the longest wavelengths (and lowest energies)
- Infrared waves:lies between the visible and microwave portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Infrared light has a range of wavelengths, just like visible light has wavelengths that range from red light to vilet.
- X-rays- High-energy radiation used in low doses to diagnose disease and in high doses to treat cancer
- visible light: are the only electromagnetic waves we can see. We see these waves as the colors of the rainbow. Each color has a different wavelength. Red has the longest wavelength and violet has the shortest wavelength. When all the waves are seen together, they make white light.
- Gamma rays: are electromagnetic radiation of high energy, very dangerous
