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Wave speed is a wave property, which may refer to absolute value of: . phase velocity, the velocity at which a wave phase propagates at a certain frequency; group velocity, the propagation velocity for the envelope of wave groups and often of wave energy, different from the phase velocity for dispersive waves
For an incident wave traveling from one medium (where the wave speed is c 1) to another medium (where the wave speed is c 2), one part of the wave will transmit into the second medium, while another part reflects back into the other direction and stays in the first medium. The amplitude of the transmitted wave and the reflected wave can be ...
Propagation of a wave packet demonstrating a phase velocity greater than the group velocity. This shows a wave with the group velocity and phase velocity going in different directions. [1] The group velocity is positive (i.e., the envelope of the wave moves rightward), while the phase velocity is negative (i.e., the peaks and troughs move ...
A soliton or solitary wave is a self-reinforcing wave packet that maintains its shape while it propagates at a constant velocity. Solitons are caused by a cancellation of nonlinear and dispersive effects in the medium. (Dispersive effects are a property of certain systems where the speed of a wave depends on its frequency.)
The speed has a weak dependence on frequency and pressure in dry air, deviating slightly from ideal behavior. In colloquial speech, speed of sound refers to the speed of sound waves in air. However, the speed of sound varies from substance to substance: typically, sound travels most slowly in gases, faster in liquids, and fastest in solids.
Wave numbers and wave vectors play an essential role in optics and the physics of wave scattering, such as X-ray diffraction, neutron diffraction, electron diffraction, and elementary particle physics. For quantum mechanical waves, the wavenumber multiplied by the reduced Planck constant is the canonical momentum.
Signal velocity is usually equal to group velocity (the speed of a short "pulse" or of a wave-packet's middle or "envelope"). However, in a few special cases (e.g., media designed to amplify the front-most parts of a pulse and then attenuate the back section of the pulse), group velocity can exceed the speed of light in vacuum, while the signal ...
A sphere rotating around an axis. Points farther from the axis move faster, satisfying ω = v / r.. In physics, angular frequency (symbol ω), also called angular speed and angular rate, is a scalar measure of the angle rate (the angle per unit time) or the temporal rate of change of the phase argument of a sinusoidal waveform or sine function (for example, in oscillations and waves).