"A wave is a propagating dynamic disturbance (change from equilibrium) of one or more quantities."
- The behavior of electromagnetic waves when encountering boundaries and obstacles.
Electromagnetic Spectrum: The range of frequencies over which electromagnetic radiation travels.
Waves: A disturbance in a medium that transmits energy through space.
Electromagnetic Waves: The waves of electromagnetic radiation that travel through space.
Speed of Light: The speed at which electromagnetic radiation travels through space.
Frequency: The number of cycles of a wave that occur per second.
Wavelength: The distance between two consecutive peaks of a wave.
Amplitude: The height of a wave's peak above or below the equilibrium point.
Reflection: The process in which electromagnetic radiation bounces off a surface.
Refraction: The process in which electromagnetic radiation changes direction as it passes through a medium.
Diffraction: The process in which electromagnetic radiation bends around an obstacle.
Snell's Law: A law that describes the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction when electromagnetic radiation passes through a medium.
Total Internal Reflection: A phenomenon that occurs when electromagnetic radiation is reflected back into a medium with an angle of incidence greater than the critical angle.
Polarization: The alignment of electromagnetic waves along a particular plane.
Interference: The combination of two or more waves that results in a new wave pattern.
Scattering: The process in which electromagnetic radiation is redirected in all directions as it passes through a medium.
Doppler Effect: The change in frequency of electromagnetic radiation due to the relative motion between the source and the observer.
Optical Instruments: Devices that use the principles of reflection, refraction, and diffraction to manipulate electromagnetic radiation, such as telescopes and microscopes.
Applications in Everyday Life: The use of reflection, refraction, and diffraction in everyday applications such as cameras, eyeglasses, and fiber-optic communication systems.
Specular reflection: When a surface is smooth and the reflection is clear and sharp, like a mirror.
Diffuse reflection: When a surface is rough and causes the reflection to scatter in different directions, like a matte surface.
Multiple reflection: When light is reflected multiple times before reaching the observer, like in a kaleidoscope.
Polarized reflection: When the reflected light oscillates only in a specific direction.
Standard refraction: When light enters a medium of a different refractive index and changes direction, like a pencil in water.
Total internal reflection: When light is reflected back into the same medium due to the angle of incidence being greater than the critical angle, like in fiber optics.
Dispersion: When light is split into its component colors due to the refractive index of each color being slightly different, like in a prism.
Polarization: When light is refracted in only one direction due to the alignment of the electromagnetic waves in the incident light.
Single slit diffraction: When light passes through a narrow slit and spreads out into a pattern of bright and dark fringes.
Double slit diffraction: When light passes through two narrow slits and produces an interference pattern of bright and dark fringes.
Multiple slit diffraction: When light passes through many narrow slits and produces a complex interference pattern.
Fraunhofer diffraction: When light passes through a small aperture and produces a diffraction pattern of concentric rings.
Fresnel diffraction: When light passes through an aperture or around an obstacle and produces a complex diffraction pattern due to the shape of the aperture or obstacle.
"In a mechanical wave, stress and strain fields oscillate about a mechanical equilibrium." "In an electromagnetic wave (such as light), coupling between the electric and magnetic fields sustains propagation of waves involving these fields according to Maxwell's equations."
"When the entire waveform moves in one direction, it is said to be a traveling wave; by contrast, a pair of superimposed periodic waves traveling in opposite directions makes a standing wave." "In a standing wave, the amplitude of vibration has nulls at some positions where the wave amplitude appears smaller or even zero."
"Sound waves are variations of the local pressure and particle motion that propagate through the medium." "Other examples of mechanical waves are seismic waves, gravity waves, surface waves, and string vibrations."
"Radio waves, infrared radiation, terahertz waves, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays."
"Mechanical and electromagnetic waves transfer energy, momentum, and information, but they do not transfer particles in the medium."
"Gravitational waves, heat diffusion waves, plasma waves, reaction-diffusion waves, and many more."
"A physical wave field is almost always confined to some finite region of space, called its domain." "Waves with infinite domain, that extend over the whole space, are commonly studied in mathematics, and are very valuable tools for understanding physical waves in finite domains."
"A plane wave is an important mathematical idealization where the disturbance is identical along any (infinite) plane normal to a specific direction of travel."
"The simplest wave is a sinusoidal plane wave in which at any point the field experiences simple harmonic motion at one frequency."
"In linear media, complicated waves can generally be decomposed as the sum of many sinusoidal plane waves having different directions of propagation and/or different frequencies."
"A transverse wave is described by a vector perpendicular to the direction of propagation (also the direction of energy transfer)." "A longitudinal wave has vectors aligned with the propagation direction."
"Mechanical waves include both transverse and longitudinal waves."
"Electromagnetic plane waves are strictly transverse."
"The physical direction of an oscillating field relative to the propagation direction is also referred to as the wave's polarization, which can be an important attribute."
"In mathematics and electronics, waves are studied as signals."
"Some waves have envelopes which do not move at all, such as standing waves (which are fundamental to music) and hydraulic jumps."
"Gravitational waves are disturbances in spacetime that propagate according to general relativity."
"Coupling between the electric and magnetic fields sustains propagation of waves involving these fields according to Maxwell's equations."
"Electromagnetic waves can travel through a vacuum and through some dielectric media (at wavelengths where they are considered transparent)."