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Sunday, December 30, 2012

Waves Basics

Basics
  • A wave is a disturbance in a medium that carries energy.
  • Two points are in phase if they have the same motion at all times
  • Two points are completely out of phase if their motions are always opposite
  • Superwaves are created when two identical waves move toward each other

Path Length and Path difference
  • Path length: the distance from a point to the source of a wave
  • Path difference(Δ): the difference between the path lengths of two different waves
  • If two point sources vibrate in phase with each other, they would be in-phase at points where Δ is a whole number multiple of λ
Waves at Boundaries
  • The frequency of a wave never changes
  • Snell's law: n×sin(θ) is constant (n is the index of refraction)
  • If a wave travels from a faster medium to a slower medium, the transmitted wave becomes inverted

Interference from two point-sources
  • If a point P is very far away from the two sources, then Δ= d×sin(θ), where d is the separation between the sources, and θ is the angle between the perpendicular bisector of the sources and the line joining P and the midpoint of the two sources




Young's double slit experiment:
  • Problem: to have two point sources of light that are coherent
  • The first slit acted as a point source of light
  • The double slit acted as two point sources of light
  • On the screen, the bright fringes are where the antinodal lines are
  • The dark fringes are where the nodal lines are

Interference of thin films:
  • Use the theory of "waves at boundaries" and path difference to do these problems
  • n1×λ1=n2×λ2



Thursday, December 20, 2012

A Busy Winter Break

There are actually a lot of things that I need to do during this winter break. This means that I cannot just waste days playing games and doing nothing; I cannot afford to waste the valuable time.

So I decided to make this post to remind myself of all the things that I need to do:

University Applications:
  • Engineering essay (600 words)
  • Engineering extracurricular activities
  • Engineering academic achievements
  • What is a folly act?
  • What defines you as you?
  • What is an educated person?
  • Write a reference letter for yourself

School
  • Study for physics
  • Study for calculus
  • Prepare for physics presentation
  • Work on philosophy essay