Sunday, April 13, 2014

Principle of Superposition!!

This week we learned all about superposition! So what exactly is superposition?
It's when two waves interfere, the resulting displacement of the medium at any location is the algebraic sum of the displacements of the individual waves at that same location!


In class we were asked the question: do waves bounce off of each other or travel through each other? This baffled some of us - we've never thought of that! Well, through an experiment with a slinky we found that waves travel through each other! We also learned that two waves can be in the same place at the same time! What? It's when one wave is super imposed upon another. When one wave interacts with another, they can either have constructive interferences or destructive interferences



Constructive interference is a type of interference that occurs at any location along the medium where the two interfering waves have a displacement in the same direction. These wave forms interact and make bigger waves. Total constructive interference occurs when waves have the same wavelength and amplitude, making the resultant wave two times as big.




Destructive interference is a type of interference that occurs at any location along the medium where the two interfering waves have a displacement in the opposite direction. Total destructive interference occurs when waves have the same wavelength and amplitude, but result in a straight line (disturbances cancel out).


(Pictures courtesy of Physics Classroom)

No comments:

Post a Comment