In physics, a pulse is a generic term describing a single disturbance that moves through a transmission medium. This medium may be vacuum (in the case of electromagnetic radiation) or matter, and may be indefinitely large or finite.

When two pulses meet up with each other while moving through the same medium, they have a tendency to bounce off each other and return back to their origin. Constructive interference occurs when a crest meets up with another crest at a given location along the medium.

A pulse refers to a disturbance that travel from one location to another location through a medium. While, A wave refers to the disturbance or variation that travels through the medium. Highly active question.

After pulses pass through each other, each pulse continues along its original direction of travel, and their original amplitudes remain unchanged. Constructive interference takes place when two pulses meet each other to create a larger pulse.

A wave is transporting energy from left to right. The particles of the medium are moving back and forth in a leftward and rightward direction.

In most cases, waves travel backward just as easily as they do forward. But a team reporting in the December Physical Review E has built the first mechanical medium where waves go only one-way. This can be seen as an extreme example of anisotropic media, in which the wave speed depends on the direction.

A wave can be thought of as a disturbance or oscillation that travels through space-time, accompanied by a transfer of energy. The direction a wave propagates is perpendicular to the direction it oscillates for transverse waves. A wave does not move mass in the direction of propagation; it transfers energy.

Generally, any wave that exhibits stable motion and is not an unstable wave.

(ii) Inertia: The medium must possess inertia or mass so that particles can store kinetic energy. (iii) Minimum friction: The medium should have minimum frictional force between its particles so that they can continue oscillating for a sufficiently long time.

Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its velocity. This includes changes to the object’s speed, or direction of motion. An aspect of this property is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at a constant speed, when no forces act upon them.

To summarise, for the propagation of waves, the conditions required for the propagating medium are elasticity, low resistance, and inertia.

The speed of sound depends upon the type of medium and its state. It is generally affected by two things: elasticity and inertia.

In general, the equation for the speed of a mechanical wave in a medium depends on the square root of the restoring force, or the elastic property, divided by the inertial property, v = elastic property inertial property .

The greater the inertia (i.e., mass density) of individual particles of the medium, the less responsive they will be to the interactions between neighboring particles and the slower that the wave will be. Thus, a sound wave will travel nearly three times faster in Helium than it will in air.

Solids: Sound travels fastest through solids. This is because molecules in a solid medium are much closer together than those in a liquid or gas, allowing sound waves to travel more quickly through it. In fact, sound waves travel over 17 times faster through steel than through air.

The speed of sound varies greatly depending upon the medium it is traveling through. The speed of sound in a medium is determined by a combination of the medium’s rigidity (or compressibility in gases) and its density. The more rigid (or less compressible) the medium, the faster the speed of sound.