Topic 3:

Waves
Part 3: Light and
Sound
 Something to think about
• Ah Beng is on holiday at the beach and
has rather foolishly forgotten to bring
sunblock.
• He blithely says, “It’s ok, I’ll just jump in
the water. It’s nice and cool there and I
• won’t get sunburnt.”
Is there
anything wrong
with his
reasoning?
 James Clerk Maxwell
• Born in Edinburgh, Scotland 13
June 1831, died 5 November 1879.
• Most famous for his formulation of
the laws of electromagnetic
radiation:

• For now we’ll just note that light

can be described as an
electromagnetic wave.
Light as an e-m wave

Direction of
propagation

We usually approximate the

speed of light as 3 × 108 ms-1
The e-m spectrum
 Radio waves
• About 3 to 300 MHz.
• Easily generated using alternating current.
• Can travel great distances by bouncing off the
ionosphere.
• Very useful for carrying information.
 More Radio Waves
• It is worth noting that Earth’s atmosphere
absorbs most e-m waves.
 Even More Radio Waves
• This famous telescope in Arecibo, Puerto
Rico is over 300 m across.
• It has allowed
astronomers to do
things like
observe Mercury’s
rotation, discover
neutron stars and
watch pulsars
over 10,000 light
years away.
 Microwaves
• About 300 Mhz to 300 GHz.
• Also used for transmitting information, but are
not reflected by ionosphere. Good for
communication with satellites.
• Shorter wavelength means a smaller aerial for
transmitting or receiving. Good for mobile
phones!
 More on microwaves
• You may have been told that microwave
ovens work because microwaves cause
the water molecules to vibrate at their
resonant frequency. This is not true.
• Microwave ovens work by dielectric
heating.
• Sorry for the digression.
Here is a Justin Bieber CD
being obliterated in a
microwave oven for your
entertainment.
 Infrared
• About 300 GHz to 430 THz.
• Most thermal radiation emitted by objects
near room temperature is infrared.
• Used in astronomy to look past the dusty
bits of the sky.
• Travels through
glass similarly to
visible light.
Used in fibre
optic cables.
 Visible light
• Wavelength from about 400 nm (violet) to
700 nm (red).
• You’re looking at it.
• When we say ‘visible’ here, we refer to
what’s visible to humans.
• Many animals perceive light in
wavelengths that we cannot.
• This thing can
detect UV light
and polarization.
 Ultraviolet
• Higher frequency than visible light, from
750 THz up to 37.5 PHz.
• Harmful to living organisms, and can be
used to kill bacteria in waste water for
recycling. (100 nm to 315 nm)
• Can cause sunburn and blindness in
humans.
More Ultraviolet
• Quick! What’s
the wavelength
of Far-UVC?
 X-rays/Roentgen rays
• Produced by the rapid deceleration of
high-speed electrons.
• These X-rays will affect
photographic film, which is how
you get images like this one.
• More recently, detectors have
been developed which don’t
need photographic film
 Gamma (γ) rays
• Generated by energy shifts inside the
nuclei of atoms.
• γ-rays are mostly lethal to biological cells.
• This makes them very useful for sterilizing
surgical instruments.
• This will not happen.
• Ever.
The e-m spectrum
 The Doppler Effect
• An observer receiving waves from a
moving body observes that the
wavelengths of the waves have been
altered.
 The Doppler Effect
• Observe:
 Redshift
• When comparing the light from distant
galaxies to light from similar sources in a
lab, we find that the starlight is of a longer
wavelength than the lab sources.
• This is redshift.
• In 1929, the American astronomer, Erwin
Hubble, noticed that the further the
galaxy, the greater the redshift.
• This basically means that our Universe is
expanding!
 Pulse echolocation
• Echolocation is
the use of
reflected sound
waves to build a
picture of one’s
surroundings.
• Some blind
people, notably
Daniel Kish, have
been known to
use this.
 Radar
• Radio Detection And
Ranging uses the same
principle as echolocation by
bouncing radio waves off
objects in the sky.
• By measuring the change
in wavelength of the
reflected wave – the
Doppler Shift – we can also
find out the speed of an
object.
 Stealth
• On a related note, many armed forces are
interested in making sure they can remain
invisible to radar.
• The trick to this is in minimizing the amount of
waves that get reflected back to radar detectors.
• One easy way to achieve this is by using the right
shape:

X-47B
UCAS - D

F-117 Stealth Fighter IX – 529

Sea Shadow
 Ultrasound
• Humans can hear sounds from 20 to
20,000 Hz.
• Beyond 20 kHz is ultrasound.
• In ultrasound imaging, the sound is
partially reflected off boundaries between
media, e.g. from flesh to bone, the density
changes, and this change causes a
reflection that can be detected.
• The smallest features detectable are
determined by the wavelength used,
usually between 0.075 mm to 1.5 mm.
 Example
• An ultrasound system for examining the
eye sends out a pulse of ultrasound waves
with a frequency of 6 MHz. The pulse
duration in 0.6 μs. The speed of sound in
the human eye is 1510 ms-1.
• What is the
resolution (smallest
detail) of the image
produced?
 Question time!
• Radio waves of wavelength ~ 10 m or
more can be reflected off the ionosphere.
What frequency are they?
• Why does communication with satellites
use radio waves shorter than 1 m?
• An air traffic control radar sends out a
pulse of radio waves. The reflected pulse is
detected 7 ms later. How far away is the
plane?
 Question time!
• An ultrasound scanner for unborn babies
has the following specifications printed on
it:
o Frequency = 3 MHz
o Pulse duration = 1μs.
• If the speed of sound in the womb is 1520
ms-1, what would be the smallest detail
that could be distinguished?
 Something to think about
• Ah Beng is on holiday at the beach and
has rather foolishly forgotten to bring
sunblock.
• He blithely says, “It’s ok, I’ll just jump in
the water. It’s nice and cool there and I
• won’t get sunburnt.”
Is there
anything wrong
with his
reasoning?