waves unit Flashcards
(49 cards)
What is a wave?
A disturbance that travels through a medium, transferring energy without transporting the matter itself.
What is a medium?
The substance through which a wave travels.
What is a transverse wave?
A wave where the particles of the medium vibrate perpendicularly to the direction the wave is traveling.
What is a compressional wave?
Waves where the vibration is parallel to the direction of motion.
What are sound waves?
The pattern of disturbance caused by the movement of energy traveling through a medium as it propagates away from the source of the sound.
What are water waves?
A propagating dynamic disturbance of one or more quantities.
What are seismic waves?
Waves of energy that travel through the Earth, typically generated by events like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or landslides.
What are crests?
The highest point of a wave.
What are troughs?
The lowest point of a wave.
What is wavelength?
The distance between two identical points on a wave.
What is frequency?
The number of wave cycles that pass a fixed point per second.
What is amplitude?
A measurement of the amount of energy transferred by a wave.
What is refraction?
The bending of a wave as it passes from one medium to another, caused by a change in the wave’s speed.
What is diffraction?
The bending or spreading out of waves as they pass around an obstacle or through an opening.
What is interference?
The phenomenon where two or more waves overlap, causing the resulting wave to have a larger or smaller amplitude depending on how the crests and troughs of the individual waves align.
What is a standing wave?
A wave pattern created when two identical waves of the same frequency travel in opposite directions, interfering with each other.
What is resonance?
The phenomenon where an object vibrates with a significantly larger amplitude when exposed to an external force at a frequency that matches its natural frequency.
What is the eardrum?
The thin membrane that separates the outer and middle ear and carries sound waves as vibrations to the chain of tiny bones in the middle ear.
What is the cochlea?
A hollow tube in the inner ear of higher vertebrates that is usually coiled like a snail shell and contains the sensory organ of hearing.
What does intensity refer to in waves?
The amount of energy a wave carries per unit area, essentially measuring how powerful a wave is over a specific space.
What is loudness?
The property of sound which is used for differentiating between the loud and faint sounds.
What is a decibel?
A unit of measurement used to express the relative intensity of sound, typically on a logarithmic scale.
What is pitch?
The quality of a sound governed by the rate of vibrations producing it.
What is ultrasonic sound?
Inaudible sound with high frequency for humans.
