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    NYC Summary_Traveling and Mechanical Waves

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    NYC Summary_Traveling and Mechanical Waves

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    6 views2 pages

    NYC Summary_Traveling and Mechanical Waves

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    CEGEP Vanier College Instructor: Roger Hajjar

    Faculty of Sciences and Technology 203-NYC-05 Waves, Optics & Modern Physics
    Physics Department Course Summaries

    Traveling and Mechanical Waves


    Standing Waves - Beats - Interference

    1 Traveling waves
    At its core, a traveling wave is a traveling oscillation. The key concept is to remember that a wave
    has a source, an oscillation. It travels through a medium, for all waves save for electromagnetic and
    gravitational waves. It is then received by an detector, a receiver, observer (equivalent terms). If
    the oscillator is a SHO, then the traveling waves writes as:

    y(x, t) = A sin(kx − ωt + ϕ) (1)

    where k is called the wavenumber, ω is the angular frequency and ϕ is the phase constant.
    These define wave properties in the following way:
    2π
    k=
    λ
    2π
    ω=
    T
    ω λ
    v= =
    k T
    λ is the wavelength, T is the period, and v is the speed of the wave or the speed of propagation.

    2 Mechanical Waves
    On the basis of the previous section, these are some important concepts to remember:
    1. There is a source, an oscillator. It sets the frequency.
    2. The oscillation travels through the medium = The wave. The wave speed is set by the properties
    of the medium
    3. A detector measures ”the wave”. It actually detects the oscillation.
    The local view of a wave, at a given position, one sees an oscillation. While a wave travels, a
    particle of the medium is going to oscillate. In that regard, it has a velocity and an acceleration.
    These are defined and calculated in the following way:

    ∂y
    vparticle =ẏ = = −Aω cos(kx − ωt + ϕ)
    ∂t
    ∂2y
    aparticle =ÿ = 2 = −Aω 2 sin(kx − ωt + ϕ)
    ∂ t

    In terms of direction of oscillations, we distinguish between two types of waves:


    1. Transverse waves where the direction of oscillation is perpendicular to the direction of propa-
    gation.
    2. Longitudinal waves where the direction of oscillation is parallel to the direction of propagation.

    2.1 Wave Speed


    The speed of a wave in a medium depends essentially on two properties of the medium: its stiffness
    (elasticity) and its density (mass, inertia). These are formulas for specific media:
    ˆ on a linear (string) medium: s
    T
    v= (2)
    µ
    where T is the tension in the string, and µ its linear mass density.
    ˆ in a gas: r
    γRT
    v= (3)
    M
    where γ is the adiabatic constants, R is the ideal gas constant, T is the temperature in Kelvins,
    and M is the molar mass.
    ˆ in a medium, in general: s
    β
    v= (4)
    ρ
    ∂P
    where β is the bulk modulus (β = −V ∂V ) anad ρ is the volume density of tge medium.
    Note that γ depends on the gas:
    1. for a monoatomic gas, γ = 5/3
    2. for a diatomic gas, γ = 7/5
    3. for a monoatomic gas γ = 4/3

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