23 Waves

23 Waves

Waves are fundamental mechanisms for transferring energy and information through a medium or space, crucially without transferring the matter of the medium itself. This means that while energy propagates, the particles of the medium only oscillate around fixed positions. A common illustration of this principle is observing a ball bobbing up and down on a pond as ripples spread outwards, where the ball moves vertically but not horizontally with the wave's energy.