Waves can be visualized as a waveform, with crests, troughs, wavelength and amplitude. Water waves (wind waves) fits excellent in this model. However, there is many kind of waves in nature. Is it correct to say that all waves propagate in this way?
Pressure waves (sound) is more like a compression and rarefaction, which propagate in a straight line. Is the waveform the wrong approach to those waves? Do they really swing up and down? Or is it the right approach, because the amplitude is too low to be noticed normally?
Is it correct to assign the waveform to classical electromagnetic waves? Do they really swing up and down as the waveform say? If we for example shine a ray of light in one direction, will the light swing up and down, and the meter over sea level will differ very slightly?
And what about the quantum mechanical photon and other elementary particles? Is it also correct to model them as a waveform? Does they really swing up and down? This sounds unlikely because of the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. However, I see everywhere that the path to a particle is pictured as a waveform. Is this approach completely misleading? If so, what is the correct visualization for the propagation of elementary particles? (I guess I am asking how to visualize the wave function).