Category: Waves—I

A wave sent along a stretched, taut string is the simplest mechanical wave. If you give one end of a stretched string a single up-and-down jerk, a wave in the form of a single pulse travels along the string, as in Fig. 16-1a. This pulse and its motion can occur because the string is under tension. When you…

Waves are of three main types: 1. Mechanical waves. These waves are most familiar because we encounter them almost constantly; common examples include water waves, sound waves, and seismic waves. All these waves have two central features: They are governed by Newton’s laws, and they can exist only within a material medium, such as water, air, and…

How could the submarine’s depth be determined from measurements made very far away? The answer is in this lesson. In August 2000, as Russia’s Northern Fleet conducted exercises in the Barents Sea north of Russia, the nuclear submarine Kursk mysteriously sank. As word of the loss spread, seismologists from around the Northern Hemisphere realized that, on the…