Wave Problems

There are many examples of waves in our daily lives, such as water waves, earthquakes, and radiation. Although these might be different types of waves, they all have one thing in common- they all have wave speed. You can determine wave speed with the equation, s=f(lambda). S represents the wave speed, f represents the frequency, and lambda represents the wave length. As an example, if you were looking at a side view of water waves on a beach and the distance between to wave crests was 10 meters, and .5 waves pass every second, your able to solve for wave speed. By using the equation given, multiply (10m)(.5Hz), which will equal a wave speed of 5m/s. Overall, wave speed is very simple to solve for when you know the wavelength and frequency of a wave.