Waves

    Hi. I'm back. Today I'm talking about waves. Like sound waves, light waves, seismic waves, and radio waves.

    First what is a wave? A wave is a disturbance that carries energy from one location to another. Some waves need to go through something called a medium. These are called mechanical waves. Like seismic waves have to go through the ground. (seismic waves = earthquakes) The ground is their medium. Other waves don't need a medium. These are called electromagnetic waves. Like light. That means that light can go through space.

Two types of mechanical waves are transverse and compressional. Transverse waves are the traditional waves that you see. The ones that go up and down. Compressional waves instead compress and decompress. They are similar because they both need a medium and they both carry energy.

Sound is a compressional wave. Sound is created by vibrating objects. The vibrations compress the air and then decompress it starting the wave. Sound waves go out in all directions.


There are different parts of a wave. There is the crest which is the top part and the trough which is the bottom part. You have probably heard someone talk about wave frequency. The frequency is the number a waves that passes in a second. You can measure this by counting the crests. Wavelength is the distance from one crest to the next. The amplitude is the lengths from the middle of the wave to the top. The higher the amplitude the more energy it has.


   So that's all this week so bye.





Link Dump:
Gifs
Compressional Wave gif
Sounds Waves going everywhere gif
Wave labeled