Dtjytyk

How many time has Arya actually used Needle?

Significance of Cersei's obsession with elephants?

Central Vacuuming: Is it worth it, and how does it compare to normal vacuuming?

Antipodal Land Area Calculation

How do living politicians protect their readily obtainable signatures from misuse?

Why weren't discrete x86 CPUs ever used in game hardware?

How long can equipment go unused before powering up runs the risk of damage?

AppleTVs create a chatty alternate WiFi network

Girl Hackers - Logic Puzzle

How were pictures turned from film to a big picture in a picture frame before digital scanning?

In musical terms, what properties are varied by the human voice to produce different words / syllables?

How to report t statistic from R

Is multiple magic items in one inherently imbalanced?

Semigroups with no morphisms between them

macOS: Name for app shortcut screen found by pinching with thumb and three fingers

Tannaka duality for semisimple groups

Project Euler #1 in C++

Why does it sometimes sound good to play a grace note as a lead in to a note in a melody?

Draw 4 of the same figure in the same tikzpicture

Is it possible for SQL statements to execute concurrently within a single session in SQL Server?

Has negative voting ever been officially implemented in elections, or seriously proposed, or even studied?

As Singapore Airlines (Krisflyer) Gold, can I bring my family into the lounge on a domestic Virgin Australia flight?

preposition before coffee

Do I really need to have a message in a novel to appeal to readers?

Can one define wavefronts for waves travelling on a stretched string?

4

$begingroup$

If I have a wave on a string, can any wavefront be defined for such a wave?
And also is it possible to have circularly polarized string waves?

newtonian-mechanics classical-mechanics waves

share|cite|improve this question

asked Mar 25 at 15:18

LuciferLucifer

968

$endgroup$

add a comment | 

4

$begingroup$

If I have a wave on a string, can any wavefront be defined for such a wave?
And also is it possible to have circularly polarized string waves?

newtonian-mechanics classical-mechanics waves

share|cite|improve this question

asked Mar 25 at 15:18

LuciferLucifer

968

$endgroup$

add a comment | 

$begingroup$

If I have a wave on a string, can any wavefront be defined for such a wave?
And also is it possible to have circularly polarized string waves?

newtonian-mechanics classical-mechanics waves

share|cite|improve this question

asked Mar 25 at 15:18

LuciferLucifer

968

$endgroup$

share|cite|improve this question

asked Mar 25 at 15:18

LuciferLucifer

968

share|cite|improve this question

asked Mar 25 at 15:18

LuciferLucifer

968

asked Mar 25 at 15:18

LuciferLucifer

968

asked Mar 25 at 15:18

LuciferLucifer

968

1 Answer
1

active

oldest

votes

6

$begingroup$

If I have a wave on a string, can any wavefront be defined for such a wave?

In general, a wavefront is defined as a connected set of points in a wave that are all at the same phase at a given time (usually at the phase corresponding to the maximum displacement.) For a wave traveling in 1-D, the points at which the string is at the same phase are disconnected from each other; so in some sense, each wavefront consists of a single point.

This actually makes sense if you think about it. For a wave traveling in 3-D, the wavefronts are two-dimensional surfaces; for a wave traveling in 2-D, the wavefronts are one-dimensional curves; and so for a wave traveling in 1-D, the wavefronts are zero-dimensional points.

And also is it possible to have circularly polarized string waves?

Sure thing. You have two independent transverse polarizations; just set up a wave where these two polarizations are 90° out of phase with each other. The result would be a wave that looks like a helix propagating down the string. The animation from Wikipedia below was created with electric fields in a circularly polarized light wave in mind; but the vectors in the animation could equally well represent the displacement of each point of the string from its equilibrium position.

share|cite|improve this answer

answered Mar 25 at 15:46

Michael SeifertMichael Seifert

15.9k22858

$endgroup$

• 
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  $begingroup$
  I like this page's description as well, nice answer-- made me go out and learn more about that image.
  $endgroup$
  – Magic Octopus Urn
  Mar 25 at 17:27
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

add a comment | 

Your Answer

StackExchange.ready(function() {
var channelOptions = {
tags: "".split(" "),
id: "151"
};
initTagRenderer("".split(" "), "".split(" "), channelOptions);

StackExchange.using("externalEditor", function() {
// Have to fire editor after snippets, if snippets enabled
if (StackExchange.settings.snippets.snippetsEnabled) {
StackExchange.using("snippets", function() {
createEditor();
});
}
else {
createEditor();
}
});

function createEditor() {
StackExchange.prepareEditor({
heartbeatType: 'answer',
autoActivateHeartbeat: false,
convertImagesToLinks: false,
noModals: true,
showLowRepImageUploadWarning: true,
reputationToPostImages: null,
bindNavPrevention: true,
postfix: "",
imageUploader: {
brandingHtml: "Powered by u003ca class="icon-imgur-white" href="https://imgur.com/"u003eu003c/au003e",
contentPolicyHtml: "User contributions licensed under u003ca href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"u003ecc by-sa 3.0 with attribution requiredu003c/au003e u003ca href="https://stackoverflow.com/legal/content-policy"u003e(content policy)u003c/au003e",
allowUrls: true
},
noCode: true, onDemand: true,
discardSelector: ".discard-answer"
,immediatelyShowMarkdownHelp:true
});


}
});

draft saved

draft discarded

Sign up or log in

StackExchange.ready(function () {
StackExchange.helpers.onClickDraftSave('#login-link');
});

Sign up using Google

Sign up using Facebook

Sign up using Email and Password

Post as a guest

Name

Email

Required, but never shown

StackExchange.ready(
function () {
StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2fphysics.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f468620%2fcan-one-define-wavefronts-for-waves-travelling-on-a-stretched-string%23new-answer', 'question_page');
}
);

Post as a guest

Name

Email

Required, but never shown

6

$begingroup$

If I have a wave on a string, can any wavefront be defined for such a wave?

In general, a wavefront is defined as a connected set of points in a wave that are all at the same phase at a given time (usually at the phase corresponding to the maximum displacement.) For a wave traveling in 1-D, the points at which the string is at the same phase are disconnected from each other; so in some sense, each wavefront consists of a single point.

This actually makes sense if you think about it. For a wave traveling in 3-D, the wavefronts are two-dimensional surfaces; for a wave traveling in 2-D, the wavefronts are one-dimensional curves; and so for a wave traveling in 1-D, the wavefronts are zero-dimensional points.

And also is it possible to have circularly polarized string waves?

Sure thing. You have two independent transverse polarizations; just set up a wave where these two polarizations are 90° out of phase with each other. The result would be a wave that looks like a helix propagating down the string. The animation from Wikipedia below was created with electric fields in a circularly polarized light wave in mind; but the vectors in the animation could equally well represent the displacement of each point of the string from its equilibrium position.

share|cite|improve this answer

answered Mar 25 at 15:46

Michael SeifertMichael Seifert

15.9k22858

$endgroup$

• 
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  $begingroup$
  I like this page's description as well, nice answer-- made me go out and learn more about that image.
  $endgroup$
  – Magic Octopus Urn
  Mar 25 at 17:27
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

add a comment | 

6

$begingroup$

If I have a wave on a string, can any wavefront be defined for such a wave?

In general, a wavefront is defined as a connected set of points in a wave that are all at the same phase at a given time (usually at the phase corresponding to the maximum displacement.) For a wave traveling in 1-D, the points at which the string is at the same phase are disconnected from each other; so in some sense, each wavefront consists of a single point.

This actually makes sense if you think about it. For a wave traveling in 3-D, the wavefronts are two-dimensional surfaces; for a wave traveling in 2-D, the wavefronts are one-dimensional curves; and so for a wave traveling in 1-D, the wavefronts are zero-dimensional points.

And also is it possible to have circularly polarized string waves?

Sure thing. You have two independent transverse polarizations; just set up a wave where these two polarizations are 90° out of phase with each other. The result would be a wave that looks like a helix propagating down the string. The animation from Wikipedia below was created with electric fields in a circularly polarized light wave in mind; but the vectors in the animation could equally well represent the displacement of each point of the string from its equilibrium position.

share|cite|improve this answer

answered Mar 25 at 15:46

Michael SeifertMichael Seifert

15.9k22858

$endgroup$

• 
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  $begingroup$
  I like this page's description as well, nice answer-- made me go out and learn more about that image.
  $endgroup$
  – Magic Octopus Urn
  Mar 25 at 17:27
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

add a comment | 

$begingroup$

If I have a wave on a string, can any wavefront be defined for such a wave?

In general, a wavefront is defined as a connected set of points in a wave that are all at the same phase at a given time (usually at the phase corresponding to the maximum displacement.) For a wave traveling in 1-D, the points at which the string is at the same phase are disconnected from each other; so in some sense, each wavefront consists of a single point.

This actually makes sense if you think about it. For a wave traveling in 3-D, the wavefronts are two-dimensional surfaces; for a wave traveling in 2-D, the wavefronts are one-dimensional curves; and so for a wave traveling in 1-D, the wavefronts are zero-dimensional points.

And also is it possible to have circularly polarized string waves?

Sure thing. You have two independent transverse polarizations; just set up a wave where these two polarizations are 90° out of phase with each other. The result would be a wave that looks like a helix propagating down the string. The animation from Wikipedia below was created with electric fields in a circularly polarized light wave in mind; but the vectors in the animation could equally well represent the displacement of each point of the string from its equilibrium position.

share|cite|improve this answer

answered Mar 25 at 15:46

Michael SeifertMichael Seifert

15.9k22858

$endgroup$

share|cite|improve this answer

answered Mar 25 at 15:46

Michael SeifertMichael Seifert

15.9k22858

answered Mar 25 at 15:46

Michael SeifertMichael Seifert

15.9k22858

answered Mar 25 at 15:46

Michael SeifertMichael Seifert

15.9k22858