Please wait for the animation to completely load.
The animation marks sections of a taut string with small circles. You can change the number of small circles (the wave markers) by dragging the slider. Consider a traveling sinusoidal wave on this string. Restart
Describe the motion of a small section of this string. Does a section of string ever move to the right or left?
Write an equation, f(t), that describes the motion of a small section of the string shown.
Compare the motion of two different small sections of string. What is the same and what is different?
If the wave function is not shown, how many markers are needed to clearly discern the sinusoidal nature of the wave function? What mistake are you likely to make if you use too few markers?
Write an equation, f(x, t), that describes this wave.
Problem by Wolfgang Christian and Mario Belloni.
HTML updated for JavaScript by Aidan Edmondson.
Physlets were developed at
Davidson College and converted from Java to JavaScript using the SwingJS
system developed at St. Olaf College.