Waves
The material through which a wave travels.
What is a medium?
A longitudinal wave that is caused by vibrations and travels through a medium. We can hear it.
What is a sound wave?
The full range of frequencies or wavelengths that an EM wave can have.
What is the Electromagnetic Spectrum?
A disturbance that transfers energy from one place to another.
What is a wave?
Used by animals, this is the use of reflected sound waves, or echoes, to find objects.
What is echolocation?
A type of wave where particles move back and forth in the same direction that the wave travels, or parallel to the wave.
What is a longitudinal wave?
How high or how low a sound is.
What is pitch?
All of the colors of the Electromagnetic spectrum that we can see with the human eye.
What is visible light?
A wave that requires a medium through which to travel.
What is a mechanical wave?
Sound waves that have frequencies greater than 20,000 Hz. This frequency is too high for humans to hear, but animals can use them in echolocation and humans can use them to make images of things inside of a person's body.
What are ultrasound waves or ultrasound?
A disturbance in electric and magnetic fields which can travel without a medium, even in empty space or a vacuum.
What is a electromagnetic wave?
The most common unit used to express loudness.
What is a decibel?
The highest frequency, highest energy waves on the electromagnetic spectrum. They can be used in making medical images, and in treating illness. They cannot penetrate the earth's atmosphere, which is a good thing, because if they did, we would all die.
What are gamma rays?
A type of wave where particles move perpendicularly to the direction of the wave. It looks like the coil of a spring moving up and down as the wave passes.
What is a transverse wave?
The transfer of light as electro magnetic waves is called this.
What is radiation?
A measure of how far the particles move away from their normal rest position.
What is amplitude?
A reflected sound wave.
What is an echo?
The longest, lowest frequency wave lengths on the EM spectrum. They are used to broadcast signals.
What are radio waves?
The measure from crest to crest or trough to trough on a wave.
What is wavelength?
What is translucent?
A measure that tells how many wave cycles occur in an amount of time. It is measured in hertz.
What is frequency?
a change in the observed frequency of a wave when the sound source, the observer or both are moving. A sound coming toward you has a higher frequency and higher pitch and seems louder. A sound going away from you has a lower pitch and lower frequency and does not sound as close, although the actual decibel level has not changed.
What is the Doppler Effect?
A type of mirror or lens that curves outward, like the back of a spoon. They cause a beam of light to diverge, or spread apart.
What is a convex mirror or lens?
This happens when two or more waves overlap and combine to form one wave.
What is interference?
The change in direction of a wave as it passes from one medium into another at an angle.
What is refraction?