Rectilinear Propagation of waves means straight line travel of waves. It is a property that describes wave as traveling in a straight lines and perpendicular to the wavefront.
To illustrate rectilinear propagation of waves, consider the ripple tank that is set to produce plane waves.
Two rulers are placed underneath the tray of the ripple tank. They are parallel to each other and perpendicular to the bar so that the waves produced are plane waves.
Consider the setup below;
When we start the vibrator and adjust it to the appropriate frequency, the wave fronts are perpendicular to the wavefront.
If we replace the straight bar attached to the vibrator with a small ball, the vibrator produces circular waves that propagates as illustrated below.
We can then adjust the rulers beneath the tray such that they are perpendicular to the wavefronts. We see that the circular waves moves outwards from the source and always perpendicular to the wavefronts.
From here we see that waves are propagated along straight lines.
Wavefronts
A wavefront is an imaginary line which joins a set of particles which are in phase for a wave in wave motion . While observing wave motion in a ripple tank, wavefronts can be seen on the white paper. The formation of circular wavefronts and plane wavefronts are as shown.
A ray in wave propagation
A ray is an idealized line that represents the direction of energy flow or wave propagation in a medium.
In waves, a ray is a line drawn perpendicular to the wavefront showing the direction of travel of the wave energy. See the figure below
The figure shows that the direction of wave travel is perpendicular to the direction of vibration.
Other topics
- Phase and Phase Difference
- Production of Electromagnetic waves
- Exam questions on waves
- some properties of waves
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