A wave is a disturbance that propagates through space carrying energy but not matter. Waves are everywhere: sound, light, seismic waves, radio waves, ripples on water. This chapter builds the common language of all wave phenomena — amplitude, wavelength, frequency, speed — and then applies it to superposition (interference, diffraction, beats), standing waves, the Doppler effect, and finally geometric optics, where light is treated as a bundle of rays (mirrors, lenses, optical instruments, dispersion and the rainbow).
Sections
- Mechanical waves: definitions
- Harmonic wave
- Superposition principle
- Standing waves
- Doppler effect
- Geometric optics
- Telescope and microscope
- Dispersion, prism, rainbow