Light & Sound Waves
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Light waves
Light belongs to the electromagnetic spectrum, so it is a transverse wave: its fields vibrate across the direction of travel, the way a drawn wave on a rope does. Two things light famously does at surfaces and boundaries are reflection and refraction, both of which get their own diagrams later in this topic.
What you know already
The wave families from earlier now earn their places in optics: light is the transverse wave you see by, sound the longitudinal wave you hear by. Both can bounce off surfaces and bend between media, and each is drawn with its own diagram style. This lesson pairs the two and shows how each is represented.
Key points of understanding
- Light waves are transverse waves.
- Light can be reflected.
- Light can be refracted.
- A transverse wave is drawn as a wavy line with peaks and troughs.
Light waves are transverse: the particles vibrate in a perpendicular direction to the energy transfer
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1.Light waves
Light belongs to the electromagnetic spectrum, so it is a transverse wave: its fields vibrate across the direction of travel, the way a drawn wave on a rope does. Two things light famously does at surfaces and boundaries are reflection and refraction, both of which get their own diagrams later in this topic.
Light waves are transverse: the particles vibrate in a perpendicular direction to the energy transfer
Key points
- Light waves are transverse waves.
- Light can be reflected.
- Light can be refracted.
- A transverse wave is drawn as a wavy line with peaks and troughs.
Guided content from the SME authoring corpus — note rn_25TjVtFjyh6Hmr8X, pinned at dad406f1ecd8 · promoted SyllabAI/syllabai-resources b3caaaa90c5e
