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Waves & Light from Arons Ch 9. A brief summary by Carl J. Wenning. Waves. Concrete experiences are essential to conceptual understanding More complex wave phenomena (e.g. light and sound) can be best understood via analogy. Teaching Mechanical Waves.
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Waves & Lightfrom Arons Ch 9 A brief summary by Carl J. Wenning
Waves • Concrete experiences are essential to conceptual understanding • More complex wave phenomena (e.g. light and sound) can be best understood via analogy
Teaching Mechanical Waves • Employ the Slinky, strings, ropes, springs, and ripple tanks • Wave phenomena and terminology: • Distinguish wave speed from particle speed • Use graphs to represent particle motion • Distinguish transverse from longitudinal waves • Carefully consider reflections of waves
Surface Waves in Shallow Water • When depth, D, is small in relation to wavelength, l, the wave speed is given by: • Note that small surface waves travel faster in deeper water. • Speed changes with depth, but wavelength does not which implies that frequency? (Is there a parallel with light in a refractive medium, n=c/v?) • Standard wave formula by analogy: • d = vt : l = vT = v/f
Standing Waves • Merseinne’s laws: • Frequency = f(tension, length, mass/unit length) • Fundamental and harmonics • Musical scales
Sound • Wave as sound analogy goes only so far: • Frequency does not equal pitch • Volume does not equal amplitude • but, it still works for: • Interference • Diffraction
Image formation • Plane mirrors • Diverging and converging lenses • Concave and convex mirrors • Virtual and real images • Ray tracings
Misconceptions about Light • How we see a la Parmenides • Filters are seen as adding color to white light