Wave visualizations

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Interactive diagrams have been created to aid in understanding wave phenomena, particularly for educational purposes. These visualizations are designed to help students grasp complex concepts like simple harmonic motion (SHM) and its relationship to circular motion. One participant highlights the importance of illustrating this connection, suggesting that a specific animation effectively demonstrates how circular motion can resemble the motion of a mass on a spring. Additionally, there is a technical critique regarding the representation of sinusoidal functions in the animations, noting that different phase angles should be included for points that are out of sync. Overall, the discussion emphasizes the value of interactive tools in enhancing comprehension of wave dynamics.
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Welcome to PF and thank you!
 
yacatuco said:
I created a few interactive diagrams to help my daughter better understand different wave phenomena. I thought they might be interesting to others as well.

👉 https://salva.github.io/wave-visualizations/index.html
This is a rather neat animation and certainly can be useful to a student trying to visualize such a motion.

I think the initial step would be to make the connection between SHM and circular motion first, because for a student just learning this, this connection is not obvious. I use the following animation to establish the connection. They get to see how a circular motion, viewed from a certain perspective, looks the same as the motion of a mass on a spring.

https://ophysics.com/w0.html

One comment about your animation. Since all three points are on the same graph, but at different locations, shouldn't the sinusoidal function include an initial phase angle for each of those points, or at least for the green and blue dot that are lagging the red?

Cheers!

Zz.
 
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