Standing Waves
Waves with boundary conditions.. e.g. hold both ends of a string fixed as in a guitar.
- velocity of any wave produced (by plucking the string) is determined by the medium.. in this case the type of the string.
- For a fixed length of string, only waves with certain wavelengths can be standing waves... namely those wavelengths which have zeroes at the ends of the string.
- Therefore only certain frequencies will be heard.. namely those which correspond to the definite wavelengths via f = v / ?.
L = ? / 2 fundamental: lowest frequency
L = ? first harmonic: higher frequency