Simple Traveling Plane Wave

This animation shows a simple traveling wave generated by a moving piston at the end of the waveguide.

The upper figure shows a representation of the molecular distribution. The darker areas represent areas where the density is greater indicating a compression. Midway between the compressions are regions of lower density indicating rarefactions.

The lower figure shows a plot of the resulting acoustic pressure or acoustic velocity profile. In this plot the sinusoidal variation of pressre and velocity can clearly be seen.

These animations were generated using MATLAB and saved as AVI files. The AVI files were converted to animated GIF files using the Ulead Gif Animator software.