Wave | Behavior, Definition, & Types - Britannica

Wave behaviour

Waves display several basic phenomena. In reflection, a wave encounters an obstacle and is reflected back. In refraction, a wave bends when it enters a medium through which it has a different speed. In diffraction, waves bend when they pass around small obstacles and spread out when they pass through small openings. In interference, when two waves meet, they can interfere constructively, creating a wave with larger amplitude than the original waves, or destructively, creating a wave with a smaller (or even zero) amplitude.

Reflection

When waves hit a boundary and are reflected, the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. The angle of incidence is the angle between the direction of motion of the wave and a line drawn perpendicular to the reflecting boundary.

Refraction

The speed of a wave depends on the properties of the medium through which it travels. For example, sound travels much faster through water than through air. When a wave enters at an angle a medium through which its speed would be slower, the wave is bent toward the perpendicular. When a wave enters at an angle a medium in which its speed would be increased, the opposite effect happens. With light, this change can be expressed by using Snell’s law of refraction.

Diffraction

When a wave encounters a small obstacle or a small opening (that is, small compared with the wavelength of the wave), the wave can bend around the obstacle or pass through the opening and then spread out. This bending or spreading out is called diffraction.

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Interference

The waves from two or more centres of disturbance may reinforce each other in some directions and cancel in others. This phenomenon is called the interference of waves. It is easy to see how this may happen. Consider two sources producing waves of the same wavelength and in phase; that is, at their origin the crests of the waves occur at the same time. If a point P is equidistant from both sources, the crests arrive at P simultaneously and reinforce each other. Similarly, the troughs arrive simultaneously and become deeper. The same situation occurs if the distances to point P are unequal but differ by one or more full wavelengths. If, however, the distances differ by half a wavelength or by an odd number of half wavelengths, then the crests of one wave will coincide with the troughs of the other and the intensity of the resultant wave is decreased. When two such waves are of equal intensity, they will cancel each other completely. Intermediate situations arise in those directions in which the distances traveled by the two waves differ by some other fraction of a wavelength, the waves tending either to reinforce or to cancel each other.

Doppler effect

When the source of a wave moves relative to an observer, the observer notices a change in the frequency of the wave. This change is called the Doppler effect, after its discoverer, Austrian physicist Christian Doppler.

Consider a source emitting a wave such as light or sound of frequency ν moving away from an observer at velocity v. The successive crests of the light waves will reach the observer at longer intervals than if the observer were at rest, and calculation shows that the observer will receive them with a frequency ν(1−v/c), where c is the velocity of the wave. The frequency of the wave will appear to the observer slightly lower than it would if the source were at rest. If the source is approaching, the frequency will be higher.

In sound this effect is an everyday experience; when a blowing horn is passed on the highway, the observer may notice that the pitch of the note seems to change. The Doppler effect for light waves is evident in spectroscopy. A shift to higher frequencies is called a blueshift, and a shift to lower frequencies is called a redshift. The redshifted light from other galaxies is evidence of the expansion of the universe.