Waves in One Dimension

In today's class, Mr. Vincent started teaching us about waves as it will be our new unit. He handed out papers that explained everything about waves and went through it all with us. We learnt that a wave is a disturbance that transfers energy from one place to another. One of the waves we learnt today is called a transverse (periodic) wave - produced by a disturbance that is moving back and forth continuously. The other wave is called a longitudinal (compressional) wave - the vibration of particles that travel the same direction as the motion of the wave. Waves have a pulse which is a single wave bump, they have crests which are the high points on a wave, troughs are the low points of a wave, and the amplitude of a wave is the maximum height between the top of a crest or bottom of the trough to the middle (particle's undisturbed position). Each wave also has a frequency - how many complete cycles (or crests) past a point per unit of time - which is measured in hertz (Hz), and a wavelength - distance from one crest to another or one trough to another. A period in a wave is the time elapsed between two successive crests passing by the same point in space and a cycle is how many times the particle does a complete oscillation (particle moving up & down or left to right) once.

Mr. Vincent then gave us a worksheet that helped us "describe waves" - learn the wave basics. We did questions 1-5 on the worksheet. We are doing a lab in tomorrow's class. & one last thing PAR will be the next to scribe :) hope this was a good scribe for my first time :) bye!

Last person to scribe this session is Paula!