Water Waves

Living on an Island in the middle of the ocean, it is easy to assume that we have all seen waves.  While that ay be true, not everyone completely understands the way waves work.  Wave speed and size is reliant on the wind that is present at the time.  The more wind, the more energy is put into the ocean thus creating waves. 

When a wave reaches the shore or reef, it often breaks creating somewhat of a barrel.  This is due to the depth of the water.  When the water gets shallower, the top of the wave continues to travel at the same speed.  This will cause the top of the wave to continue moving at the same speed.  This will cause a wave to break creating a barrel.  

Superposition

Superposition is the resulting displacement of a medium at any location, its the algebraic sum of the displacements where they meet.  When two waves interfere with each other, they either combine and build up or they cancel each other out.  

When they build up, it is known as constructive interference.  This will only happen when two waves are traveling on the same side.  The result of this would be the sum of the two waves combined.  

Destructive interference is when the waves are traveling on opposing sides and they can result in total cancelation and having no wave at all.

Waves pass through each other as opposed to bouncing off of each other.  This allows the constructive or destructive interference to occur.

Waves

     A wave is a disturbance or oscillation that travels through space and matter.  A wavelength is literally the length of the wave.  A complete wave consists of a trough and a crest.  Waves are things that occur everyday in pretty much everything that we do.  The ocean has waves and it is very to easy to see the different parts of a wave in an ocean wave.  The trough and the crest are noticeable.  Another obvious example of a wave is sound waves.
     There are two types of waves, transverse waves and longitudinal waves.  Transverse waves are waves which the energy of the wave and the energy given off by the wave are perpendicular to each other.  Longitudinal waves are ones which wave energy and the energy from the wave travel parallel to each other.  Sound waves, like ones given off by this speaker, are longitudinal waves.  The reason is that both paths of energy travel in the same direction.