Wave is a disturbance of a field.
Which of the three physical quantities is transported by a wave: mass, energy, momentum?
Give some examples of waves together with the description of their basic properties (longitudinal/transversal, vector/scalar, mechanical, other).
Write down the basic function describing a wave in 1D and explain the meaning of the parameters appearing in the function (amplitude, angular frequency, wave number ).
What is the phase speed of a wave and how it is expressed by the angular frequency and the wave number?
Write down the differential equation for a wave in 1D. How does this equation look like for an electromagnetic wave?
What does the superposition principle for waves state?
What is the standing wave? Give some examples of standing waves.
What are the Chladni patterns?
Explain the phenomenon of resonance for a standing wave? (give some examples).
Give the solutions for a standing wave in a string of length L (allowed spatial frequencies, corresponding wavelengths, wave functions, time frequencies).
Explain the phenomenon of wave interference. What is the constructive and the destructive interference? What conditions have to be fulfilled for the interference to happen (coherence)?
Describe the Young experiment which revealed the wave nature of light.
Why in the Young experiment a sequence of two apertures is necessary: the first with one slit and the second with two slits?
What is the difference between interference by division of a wave front and division of an amplitude (give some examples)?
Draw analogy between the interference of light on a thin layer (division of amplitude) and the scattering of electrons on a surface of a metal (e.g. Ni)
What is the diffraction grating and what are its applications?
Explain the failures of classical physics related to such phenomena like: black body radiation, external photoelectric effect, liner spectra of light emitted by gases. What is the ultraviolet catastrophe?
What is the 3K background radiation?