2nd Nov '25

Waves

Waves transport energy from one place to another. They are temporary displacement in either matter or fields. The maximum displacement is known as the of a wave and is measured from the , this is where the matter (or field) would be if there wasn't a disturbance.

measurements of a wave

We can also measure the , this is simply the distance between two identical parts of the wave. For ease we normally measure peak to peak or trough to trough.

There are two related time measurements we can make. The is the amount of time to complete one cycle (wave) and is the number of cycles (waves) in a bit of time. One cycle per second is one hertz.