PHYSICS reflect back off of that boundary.

The incident wave will

Vibrations and Waves
Vibration of a Pendulum
If you place a heavy object on the end of a light string
and allow it to swing back and forth then you have a
simple pendulum.
The amount of time to make one complete vibration is
known as the period (T) of the pendulum. A long
pendulum will have a long period, a shorter pendulum
will have a shorter period.
The back and forth motion of a pendulum is called
simple harmonic motion. If the position of an object in
simple harmonic motion is graphed with respect to time
the result will be a sine curve. A sine curve has certain
parts to it that correspond to the parts of wave motion,
these are the crests and troughs (the highest and
lowest points on the wave), the amplitude (A, the
distance from the center to the extreme points in the
oscillation), and the wavelength (the distance between
any two adjacent corresponding parts of waves, such as
one crest to the next or one trough to the next).
form an interference pattern with the reflected wave,
and if the wavelength of the wave is just right then
what is known as a standing wave will be formed where
the entire medium will appear to vibrate together.
If the source and detector of a sound are moving
toward or away from each other the frequency of the
sound observed will change depending on the motion. If
they move toward each other the frequency observed
will be higher than they are at rest, if they move away
from each other than the observed frequency will be
lower. This is known as the Doppler effect.
The three-dimensional version of a bow wave comes
from a very fast plane moving through the air. Rather
than a flat ’v’ on the surface of a lake a plane moving
faster than the speed of sound will produce a shock
wave that follows behind the plane in a cone.

The number of vibrations that happen per second is

called the frequency (f) of the oscillation, this is
measured in Hertz
(Hz) or inverse seconds (s−1).
The relationship between period and frequency is an
inverse one, so f = 1/T and T = 1/f.

A wave is a mechanism to transfer energy without

transferring mass. The speed of a wave (v) depends on
the medium through which the wave moves.
Since the frequency of a wave is the number of full
waves that pass a point in one second and the
wavelength is how long each of those waves is the
speed of the wave is given by v = f_. ???

Transverse waves are waves that vibrate perpendicular

to the direction of wave travel like a wave in a stretched
string.
Longitudinal waves or compression waves are waves
that vibrate forward and backward along the direction
of travel like sound waves traveling through air.

Interference
Unlike two physical objects, two waves are able to
move through each other.
If two waves line up so that a crest in one wave is on
top of a crest in the other then the result will be what is
known as constructive interference and the resulting
wave will have a larger amplitude than either of the two
that are overlapping. If a crest lines up with a trough of
the other wave then the result will be destructive
interference and the resulting wave will be smaller,
possibly zero. If two waves arrive at a point where they
are in step with each other we say that the waves are in
phase with each other, if they are out of step and cancel
each other then we say that they are out of phase with
each other.

When a wave travels along through some medium and

comes to a more dense (or rigid) medium then it will