Straight Barrier: Wavefront

Hello everyone, this is Lina with today's scribe post.


We started today's class by going over the worksheet we recieved yesterday about wavefronts and wave rays. It was pretty straight forward.


Here are a couple of definitions for you:

A wavefront is a continuous crest or trough.
A wave ray is to show the direction of travel/transmission of the wavefront.
Remember: The wave ray is always perpendicular to the wavefront. You can also say that the wave ray is at a right angle to the wavefront.

For the wavefront exercise we had to draw the wave rays of circular, straight and irregular wavefronts.

We continued our unit, Waves in Two Dimensions. How exciting. Below is a diagram of how you would determine how the wavefronts are reflected at an angle to a straight barrier.

A few points to remember about this diagram are:

• The Incident wave ray is perpendicular to the Incident wavefront
• The Reflected wave ray is perpendicular to the Reflected wavefront.
• The normal is the straight line perpendicular to the barrier. (not in my diagram, but please bear with me)
• The angle of incidence (theta i) is the angle between the incident wave front and the barrier.
• The angle of reflection (theta r) is the angle between the reflected wavefront and the barrier.
• The angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection.
• Another thing you must remember is that the length between the lines of each wavefront should be equal in distance.

The diagram I drew above uses the angle of incidence and reflection as applied to the wavefronts to determine how the wavefronts are reflected.

Another method is to use the angle of incidence and reflection as applied to the normal. Therefore, the angle of incidence (theta i) would be the angle between the incident wave and the normal and the angle of reflection (theta r) would be between the reflection wave and the normal. I don't think we've used this method as of yet, but maybe we might later on.

We also looked at the reflection of waves from a Parabolic Reflector. We worked on drawing our own diagrams during the latter half of the class. We applied our knowledge of the straight barrier to help us out. The only difference is that it's a parabolic barrier.

Tonight's homework is our very first assignment in Waves of Two Dimensions. Complete it for tomorrow's class (or at least try to). ALSO don't forget our WAVES RESEARCH PROJECT due on September 25. Try not to leave it until the last moment like I know we've all done with one project or another. Good luck on that!

If you find anything confusing or anything wrong. Please leave a comment and let me know. This is my first time blogging for school where someone has to learn from it! I hope I didn't make any mistakes.

Last but not least, tomorrow's scribe will be... Mary Ann.