ABSTRACT
Waves share many similarities to vibrations or oscillations – that is, back-and-forth motion – such as a swinging pendulum. The resulting standing wave patterns are called normal, or resonant, modes of vibration. Waves come in various types, such as water waves, sound waves, earthquake waves, and light waves. When a medium is disturbed, work is done on it and thus energy imparted to it. The addition of the energy sets some of the particles in the medium vibrating. Specific physical quantities are used to describe sinusoidal waves. A person on a pier observes a set of incoming sinusoidal water waves with a distance of 5.6 m between the crests. In general, waves may be divided into two types, based on the direction of the particles’ oscillations relative to that of the wave velocity. When two or more waves meet or pass through the same region of a medium, they pass through each other and each wave proceeds without being altered.
