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Waves and Light: An Analogy Approach Teaching Guide

Explore wave phenomena through hands-on experiences, with a focus on mechanical and surface waves. Learn about sound, reflection, standing waves, and light concepts in a clear and engaging manner.

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Waves and Light: An Analogy Approach Teaching Guide

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  1. Waves & Lightfrom Arons Ch 9 A brief summary by Carl J. Wenning

  2. Waves • Concrete experiences are essential to conceptual understanding • More complex wave phenomena (e.g. light and sound) can be best understood via analogy

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. Standing Waves • Merseinne’s laws: • Frequency = f(tension, length, mass/unit length) • Fundamental and harmonics • Musical scales

  6. 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

  7. Image formation • Plane mirrors • Diverging and converging lenses • Concave and convex mirrors • Virtual and real images • Ray tracings

  8. Misconceptions about Light • How we see a la Parmenides • Filters are seen as adding color to white light

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