Waves in which the direction of media displacement is parallel (along) to the direction of travel
A type of longitudinal wave: A plane pressure pulse wave.
Nonfree image: detailed animation of a longitudinal wave
Detailed animation of longitudinal wave motion (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Longitudinal waves are waves in which the vibration of the medium is parallel to the direction the wave travels and displacement of the medium is in the same (or opposite) direction of the wave propagation. Mechanical longitudinal waves are also called compressional or compression waves, because they produce compression and rarefaction when traveling through a medium, and pressure waves, because they produce increases and decreases in pressure. A wave along the length of a stretched Slinky toy, where the distance between coils increases and decreases, is a good visualization. Real-world examples include sound waves (vibrations in pressure, a particle of displacement, and particle velocity propagated in an elastic medium) and seismic P-waves (created by earthquakes and explosions).
The other main type of wave is the transverse wave, in which the displacements of the medium are at right angles to the direction of propagation. Transverse waves, for instance, describe some bulk sound waves in solid materials (but not in fluids); these are also called "shear waves" to differentiate them from the (longitudinal) pressure waves that these materials also support.
Longitudinalwaves are waves in which the vibration of the medium is parallel to the direction the wave travels and displacement of the medium is in the...
waves can be produced only in media which possess elasticity and inertia. There are three types of mechanical waves: transverse waves, longitudinal waves...
A longitudinal mode of a resonant cavity is a particular standing wave pattern formed by waves confined in the cavity. The longitudinal modes correspond...
decades Longitudinal voltage, in telecommunication, a voltage induced or appearing along the length of a transmission medium Longitudinalwave, a wave with...
form standing waves. Next, the example of sound waves in a pipe demonstrates how the same principles can be applied to longitudinalwaves with analogous...
supported by a layer, or longitudinal and shear waves, that travel in the bulk. Rayleigh waves have a speed slightly less than shear waves by a factor dependent...
complex exponential plane wave. When the values of F {\displaystyle F} are vectors, the wave is said to be a longitudinalwave if the vectors are always...
however, it can be transmitted as both longitudinalwaves and transverse waves. Longitudinal sound waves are waves of alternating pressure deviations from...
pressure waves (longitudinalwaves) and shear waves (transverse waves), respectively. In earthquakes, the corresponding seismic waves are called P-waves (primary...
velocity cg = dω/dk, as functions of d/λ or fd. cl and ct are the longitudinalwave and shear wave velocities respectively. The solution of these equations also...
be shown for plane longitudinalwave propagation that the synthesis of two one-way wave equations leads to a general two-way wave equation. For ∇ c =...
equation for electromagnetic waves, which is derived from the electromagnetic wave equation by setting the longitudinalwave number equal to zero and solving...
types of surface acoustic waves, such as Love waves, which are polarised in the plane of the surface, rather than longitudinal and vertical. SAWs such as...
Zenneck wave, Zenneck surface wave or Sommerfeld-Zenneck surface wave is a longitudinal, inhomogeneous or non-uniform electromagnetic plane wave incident...
"megacycles per second" (that is, megahertz (MHz)). Sound is a traveling longitudinalwave, which is an oscillation of pressure. Humans perceive the frequency...
electrostatic wave must be purely longitudinal. An electromagnetic wave, in contrast, must have a transverse component, but may also be partially longitudinal. Waves...
as it transmits a wave. The SI unit of particle velocity is the metre per second (m/s). In many cases this is a longitudinalwave of pressure as with...
seismic waves and are sometimes also referred to as Primary Waves. Mechanical longitudinalwaves, also called compressional or compression waves This disambiguation...
matrix method (also called the matricant approach).[citation needed] Longitudinalwave Antiplane shear A. E. H. Love, "Some problems of geodynamics", first...
This article summarizes equations in the theory of waves. A wave can be longitudinal where the oscillations are parallel (or antiparallel) to the propagation...
waves. The Langmuir wave is a purely longitudinalwave, that is, the wave vector is in the same direction as the E-field. It is an electrostatic wave;...
although both are density waves: sound waves in fluids only have longitudinal components, whereas sound waves in solids have longitudinal and transverse components...
incident angle is not normal to the interface. Thus, for example, if a longitudinalwave from a fluid (e.g., water or air) strikes a solid (e.g., steel plate)...
hypothesized that light is a wave propagating through an aether. He and Isaac Newton could only envision light waves as being longitudinal, propagating like sound...
In physics, acoustics, and telecommunications, a harmonic is a sinusoidal wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the fundamental frequency...
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Detailed animation of longitudinal wave motion (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0)