State the principle of superposition of waves and illustrate it schematically.

Whenever two or more waves travelling through the same medium at the same time pass through each other, the net displacement of the medium at any point in space-time is simply given by the sum of the individual wave displacements.An easy way to illustrate this schematically would be by sketching both constructive and destructive cases using sine and cosine waves. More complicated waveforms could them be later also considered (square, triangular, etc...).

PV

Related Physics A Level answers

All answers ▸

Why are values for gravitational potential always negative?


State similarity and difference between the electric field lines and the gravitational field lines around an isolated positively charged metal sphere.


The speed of water moving through a turbine is 2.5 m/s. Show that the mass of water passing through an area of 500 metres squared in one second is about 1 x 10^6 kg (density of sea water = 1030 kg/m^3)


Imagine a ball rolls off a set of stairs with horizontal velocity, u; the stairs have a height, h and length of l. Find a formula for which step the ball will hit, n.