- #1
Farn
I thought I had a pretty good understanding of AC; however I’m starting to question that after I read a chapter in an electronics book about impedance matching.
I’ve never really considered AC to be a wave is the sense of ocean waves or sound waves. Reasons being that those more conventional waves don’t have particles that actually travel and AC does. Also AC doesn’t really propagate like other waves, its more just current goes this way, current goes that way.
I was pretty confident with all this until I read that the reason for impedance matching is to avoid power losses in the form of it being reflected back to the source. This to me sounded like the phenomena of a real wave, and not something my understanding of AC could explain.
So I guess my real question is what best describes AC, and also how could it ever be reflected?
Please excuse the post. It’s quite late here and I’m very tired. Not really sure how coherent the whole thing is, but I just had to post it before I went to bed.
I’ve never really considered AC to be a wave is the sense of ocean waves or sound waves. Reasons being that those more conventional waves don’t have particles that actually travel and AC does. Also AC doesn’t really propagate like other waves, its more just current goes this way, current goes that way.
I was pretty confident with all this until I read that the reason for impedance matching is to avoid power losses in the form of it being reflected back to the source. This to me sounded like the phenomena of a real wave, and not something my understanding of AC could explain.
So I guess my real question is what best describes AC, and also how could it ever be reflected?
Please excuse the post. It’s quite late here and I’m very tired. Not really sure how coherent the whole thing is, but I just had to post it before I went to bed.