Transverse and Longitudinal Waves

in this video we're going to talk about waves specifically transverse waves and longitudinal waves but let's focus on waves first waves can transfer energy and information from one place to another it's basically disturbance and here is an example of wave the top part of the wave is known as the crest the bottom part of the wave is known as the trough the amplitude of the wave is the distance between the peak of the wave and its midpoint this right here is the length of the wave also known as the wavelength you could also measure the wavelength by taking the distance between two peaks of the wave or two troughs of the wave so this is also equal to the wavelength as well now the speed of wave can be calculated by multiplying the wavelength by the frequency the frequency is basically the number of cycles that occur per second if you take the number of cycles and divided by the time you can get the frequency the period is the time it takes to complete one cycle so taking the total time and dividing by the number of cycles that occurs will give you the period the frequency is one over the period the reciprocals of each other the frequency can be measured in hertz or one over seconds the period is typically measured in seconds so those are some equations that you may need to know when dealing with waves now let's talk about transverse waves what do you think transverse wave is the wave that we drew earlier is an example of transverse wave the reason why is transverse wave is because the wave is moving in the direction but the oscillations are in the direction anytime the oscillations are perpendicular to the direction of the wave motion we're dealing with transverse wave example of transverse waves include water waves let's say if you're on beach and you see those waves on the ocean those are transverse waves em waves are also transverse so these are electromagnetic waves such as light waves radio waves infrared rays x-rays gamma rays ultraviolet rays from the sun all of these are transverse waves another example is if you have string and if you pluck the string that's going to create transverse wave it's going to oscillate up and down while appearing to move left and right the next type of wave that you need to be familiar with are longitudinal waves now longitudinal waves are different than transverse waves in transverse waves we said that the oscillations and the direction of the wave motion they're perpendicular to each other well for longitudinal waves the oscillations are parallel to the direction of the wave motion so let me see if can draw visual illustration so notice here we have region of compression and here the wave is expanded sometimes known as rare faction so the wave is moving in the positive direction but notice that the oscillations are not in the direction the oscillations are in the direction here this wave is being compressed in the direction and here it's expanded so when you have these regions of compression and expansion you're dealing with longitudinal wave the oscillations are in the same direction as the direction of the wave itself good example of longitudinal wave is sound wave sound waves are basically pressure waves in sound wave you would have region of high pressure where the molecules are very close to each other and you'll have regions of low pressure where they're more spread out so sound waves is good example of longitudinal waves and so that's basically it so remember longitudinal waves have their oscillations parallel to the direction of the wave motion but transverse waves have oscillations that are perpendicular to the direction of the wave motion