Raymond A. Serway and John W. Jewett. “Physics for Scientists and Engineers with modern physics“, 8th edition, Brooks/Cole, Belmont, USA (2010)

Part 2. Oscillations and Mechanical Waves

Many of us experienced waves as children when we dropped a pebble into a pond. At the point the pebble hits the water’s surface, circular waves are created. These waves move outward from the creation point in expanding circles until they reach the shore. If you were to examine carefully the motion of a small object floating on the disturbed water, you would see that the object moves vertically and horizontally about its original position but does not undergo any net displacement away from or toward the point at which the pebble hit the water. The small elements of water in contact with the object, as well as all the other water elements on the pond’s surface, behave in the same way. That is, the water wave moves from the point of origin to the shore, but the water is not carried with it.

The world is full of waves, the two main types being mechanical waves and electromagnetic waves. In the case of mechanical waves, some physical medium is being disturbed; in our pebble example, elements of water are disturbed. Electromagnetic waves do not require a medium to propagate; some examples of electromagnetic waves are visible light, radio waves, television signals, and x-rays. Here, in this part of the course, we study only mechanical waves.