Refraction is an effect that occurs when a light wave, incident at an angle away from the normal, passes a boundary from one medium into another in which there is a change in velocity of the light. The wavelength decreases as the light enters the medium and the light wave changes direction.

Refraction is the change in direction of waves that occurs when waves travel from one medium to another. Refraction is always accompanied by a wavelength and speed change. Diffraction is the bending of waves around obstacles and openings.

Refraction is the bending of a wave caused by a change in its speed as it moves from one medium to another. In diffraction an object causes a wave to change direction and bend around it.

Refraction occurs when waves bend as they enter a new medium at an angle. You can see an example of refraction in the Figure below. Light bends when it passes from air to water or from water to air.

Destructive interference occurs when the crests of one wave overlap the troughs, or lowest points, of another wave. The Figure below shows what happens. As the waves pass through each other, the crests and troughs cancel each other out to produce a wave with zero amplitude.

A wave is a disturbance that travels through a medium from one location to another. a wave is the motion of a disturbance. The material the wave passes through is called a medium. A single disturbance passing through a medium is called a pulse.

Mechanical waves are waves that require a medium. This means that they have to have some sort of matter to travel through. These waves travel when molecules in the medium collide with each other passing on energy. One example of a mechanical wave is sound.

An example of a medium is a metal spoon sitting in a cup of hot tea that is too hot to touch. An example of a medium is a newspaper from the combined media form of newspapers, television, magazines, radio and the Internet. Any of various kinds of storage devices, such as hard drives or digital audiotape.

There are three types of mechanical waves: transverse, longitudinal, and surface waves. They differ in how particles of the medium move.

These properties are: amplitude, wavelength, frequency, period, and velocity.

No matter whether you are talking about vibrations or waves, all of them can be characterized by the following four characteristics: amplitude, wavelength, frequency, and speed. The amplitude of a wave can be described as the maximum distance the molecules are displaced from their starting place .

There are two basic types of wave motion for mechanical waves: longitudinal waves and transverse waves. The animations below demonstrate both types of wave and illustrate the difference between the motion of the wave and the motion of the particles in the medium through which the wave is travelling.

Light Waves – Key Terms & Types

• Electromagnetic waves: waves made of oscillating magnetic and electric fields, i.e., radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, gamma rays and x-rays.
• Light waves: a synonym for electromagnetic waves.

Light waves are just one type of electromagnetic wave. Other electromagnetic waves include the microwaves in your oven, radio waves, and X-rays. Light waves are regarded as a varying electric field (E) coupled with a varying magnetic field (B), at right angles to each other and to the direction of travel.

Sound, light and water waves and how scientists worked out the mathematics. As different as they all seem, all of these waves have something in common – they are all oscillations that carry energy from one place to another.

Different waves, same properties These include sound waves, light waves, radio waves, microwaves and others. All kinds of waves have the same fundamental properties of reflection, refraction, diffraction and interference, and all waves have a wavelength, frequency, speed and amplitude.

Unlike a wave in water or a sound wave in air, light waves don’t need a physical substance to travel through. They can cross empty space because their medium does not involve physical matter.

P waves travel fastest and are the first to arrive from the earthquake. In S or shear waves, rock oscillates perpendicular to the direction of wave propagation. In rock, S waves generally travel about 60% the speed of P waves, and the S wave always arrives after the P wave.

S-Waves

An L wave in pulse wave Doppler and M mode echocardiography represents continued pulmonary vein mid diastolic flow through the left atrium in to LV across mitral valve after early rapid filling.

The first kind of surface wave is called a Love wave, named after A.E.H. Love, a British mathematician who worked out the mathematical model for this kind of wave in 1911. Because it rolls, it moves the ground up and down, and side-to-side in the same direction that the wave is moving.

Also called long wave. …