Wave Interference - the principle of superposition

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Element1674
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Homework Statement


The problems are attached in the photo below (or at least I'm hoping they are, doing this from my Ipad makes this somewhat diffcult)

Homework Equations


Not really an equation, but the Principle of Superposition states that the amplitude of two interfering waves are added together when they coincide.

The Attempt at a Solution


My instructor rushed through this concept and the homework (aside from the questions below) all involved waves of equal width (I'll just call that width value x). So all that needed to be done was to add the amplitude of the waves (AmpWaveA + AmpWaveB = Amplitude of resulting wave) where the resulting wave had the same width value of X. I'm just curious on how to do this for waves with different widths; I know I add their amplitudes, but I don't know what the shape of the resulting wave should be.

So my question is, how do I do question 2? The wave diagrams. Also sorry about the upside down picture, idk why it did that.
 
Attachments
  • Photo of a textbook page showing Figure 13 with two sine waves on grids, and the Figure 12 question block below, both printed on a page headed 9.1 Interference of Waves, page 419.
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Last edited:
Element1674 said:

Homework Statement


The problems are attached in the photo below (or at least I'm hoping they are, doing this from my Ipad makes this somewhat diffcult)

Homework Equations


Not really an equation, but the Principle of Superposition states that the amplitude of two interfering waves are added together when they coincide.

The Attempt at a Solution


My instructor rushed through this concept and the homework (aside from the questions below) all involved waves of equal width (I'll just call that width value x). So all that needed to be done was to add the amplitude of the waves (AmpWaveA + AmpWaveB = Amplitude of resulting wave) where the resulting wave had the same width value of X. I'm just curious on how to do this for waves with different widths; I know I add their amplitudes, but I don't know what the shape of the resulting wave should be.

So my question is, how do I do question 2? The wave diagrams. Also sorry about the upside down picture, idk why it did that.

Add their amplitudes. If the vertical displacement of a wave at one point is -1, and the corresponding vertical displacement of the other wave is 2, the overall vertical displacement is 1.