SEEING LIFE FROM BOTH SIDES

Consider a wave! The word itself conjures up a variety of pictures in one’s mind, be it undulations rolling along the surface of a pond, river or ocean, acoustic sound waves reverberating through air to our hearing or light, or radio and other electromagnetic waves that provide the basis for a variety of technologies that dominate our everyday lives. Waves ranging in various scales of size and time fill the world we live in!

But what, in fact, is a wave? The pictures that arise lead to a conception of something in motion. Is it the movement of air, water, elementary particles and so on in the different kinds of waves?

A wave is actually a phenomenon of energy in active motion! It is a process that is separate from the air that transmits our voice or the water carrying, for example, the ocean wave, which crashes so relentlessly on the seashore and thereby provides a spectacle of endless fascination and delight. A wave is a form of energy transport or transmission, a process of the vibrating movement of energy through the medium of air or water – a wave in any medium is simply an oscillation that transmits energy! Energy from the sun warms the atmosphere and creates wind currents. Wind