how do waves look in 3 dimensions? every representation i've been exposed to seems to reduce it to 2 dimensions.
isn't it more like a series of spheres that expand from a focal point, where they each compress and expand the medium they move through if it's mechanical? i don't know how it would behave in the EM sense.
i guess it's better to ask if waves are just fields that propagate themselves. it just doesn't make sense to me to see a wave moving in one direction.
Jose Smith
like this makes sense. why isn't this the way it's shown?
Jordan Jenkins
It depends on the type of wave.
Longitudinal waves, like sound waves, look like stuff moving back and forth along the wave axis
Transverse/Dipole waves, like electromagnetic waves, are in fact moving back and forth in a plane parallel to the wave axis. This is why light has a polarization.
Quadrupole waves, like gravity waves, are more complicated - in cross-section (xy plane, wave traveling along z axis), imagine a circle squishing in the x and stretching in the y to form a vertical ellipse, then squishing in the y and stretching in the x to form a horizontal ellipse.
Angel Brooks
Waves are just some quantity that oscillate in value over time and/or space.
E.g. EM waves only really act in one spatial dimension, the oscillation is just in the strength of the E and M fields.
Gabriel Perez
That's only if the waves expand radially, if it's a plane wave it looks pretty different
Justin Martin
so it's not an oscillation of matter but energy? but i thought all waves expand radially because fields are radial.
Evan Murphy
>fields are radial Do colorless green fields sleep radially?
Aaron Cox
I want you to take out a laser pointer and point at the wall. Does the light seem to be expanding from the source in uniform, omnidirectional spheres? If so, the wall behind you and the ceiling should also be illuminated with similar strength, depending on their distance from the source.
Julian Wilson
when the source is too far, you can always approximnate to a plane wave, thats why you don't usually see this kind of representation .
Also, a radiation pattern graph is much more useful and easy to understand than making a complicated 3D represantiation of the waveform
Jeremiah Young
Do all water waves expand radially? If so, how do wave pool machines work?
Sebastian Green
>when the source is too far, you can always approximnate to a plane wave, thats why you don't usually see this kind of representation
Thank you. Additionally, dipole radiation (like EM) doesn't really follow a sphere pattern - it's only created by a varying dipole moment, and so along the dipole axis there's no radiation. You get more of a toroidal pattern.
Bentley Cruz
Waves are just pressure differences in a sense
Christian Watson
it's just reflecting radial waves at multiple points which combine to form a traversing wave?
Alexander Hall
>so it's not an oscillation of matter but energy? It's an oscillation of anything
Nathaniel Johnson
even of time? woah................
Lucas Johnson
An oscillation of anything over time and space to be more precise
Jeremiah Moore
how can it be over space? you mean like a car wheel covering distance?
Benjamin Price
Kind of, as in the wave needs to move through space in some direction
Adrian Barnes
can waves move in closed paths?
Dylan Smith
have some gifs of transverse EM waves
Gavin Anderson
...
Kevin Richardson
>can waves move in closed paths? see STANDING WAVE