| Title page |
| Basic wave theory |
| Deep water waves |
| Shallow water waves |
| Waves in water of varying depth |
| Wave trains |
| Beach waves |
| Applets |
| References |
| Symbols Legend |
| Troubleshooting |
Wave trains
Now that we have a more accurate model of water waves over a varying sea floor, we can examine a more realistic model of a body of water. To this point, we have only examined one wave. We this wave a wave train. However, in a real body of water, there are many different wave trains affecting the water at a particular spot, each with a different amplitude, wavelength, etc. We now increase our model to allow as many as 6 wave trains at one time. All the wave trains follow the aforementioned model; however, they begin with different initial amplitudes and wavelengths. The applet below shows how the motion changes when more than one wave
train are superimposed. The position of a particular particle will be
obtained by summing the yx's and yy's from all the wave trains.
It is important to note that this is as accurate a model as we can produce in two dimensions. If we had three dimensions, we could allow for the wave trains to be moving in different horizontal directions. This would produce the most accurate model of a real body of water.
Java applet: wave trains