Timeline for Why do travelling waves continue after amplitude sum = 0?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 4, 2016 at 14:53 | comment | added | jpa | @curiousdannii I don't think angular velocity matters for "idealized" springs, though it will of course occur in real ones. Also, all waves in the same spring always have the same propagation speed. | |
| Apr 4, 2016 at 12:11 | comment | added | curiousdannii | @IlmariKaronen If the center point was truly fastened in both degrees of freedom it would look exactly the same, as long as both waves had the same speed. But if they had different speeds then although they would still cancel each other out, they would not look like they had both reflected. | |
| Apr 4, 2016 at 12:09 | comment | added | Ilmari Karonen | @curiousdannii: jpa does have a point; the dynamics on either side of the midpoint would look exactly the same even if you fastened the midpoint to an immobile wall. (In fact, this is how one can show that a wave hitting a fixed boundary will produce an inverted reflection.) So we effectively have two equivalent descriptions of the same motion; one in which the waves pass through each other and combine linearly, and one in which they never interact except through the midpoint, which never moves. | |
| Apr 4, 2016 at 11:21 | comment | added | curiousdannii | @jpa It does have an angular velocity and acceleration. | |
| Apr 4, 2016 at 7:05 | comment | added | jpa | Fun further consideration: the point in the middle of the string never moves, so its displacement and velocity are both zero. Instead the pulse going right reappears from the velocity "left behind" by the pulse that went leftwards and got cancelled. | |
| Apr 3, 2016 at 18:30 | history | answered | Ilmari Karonen | CC BY-SA 3.0 |