Quote:
Originally Posted by The Real BigGuy
When two waves of the same amplitude, traveling in the same direction constructively combine their amplitude is doubled. In other words they get twice as big. Doesn’t matter if they are natural or man made. That is physics.
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So to get a better understanding of this as admittedly I am NOT an expert on the subject I managed to talk to a friend of mine who is. He's a pretty smart guy so I have no reason to question his ivy league PhD
Now hopefully I don't butcher what he told me as some of it was well over my head.
To set the stage for this, the first has to be made clear. For two waves travelling in the SAME direction to interfere with one another they cannot be of the same frequency otherwise they would travel at the same speed and never interact. That makes sense. They do not have to be of the same amplitude but there is some sort of calculation need to determine if the two wave will in fact constructively combine, superimpose, or remain separate, IE a wave that is travelling in the same direction but does not combine (out of phase vs in phase). Waves that occur within a physical medium such as water have similar characteristics as energy or RF waves but do not necessarily behave exactly the same. That part I did not quite understand the match and science behind it....
One key thing I did get out of our discussion was that in order for two waves to achieve a full combined amplitude they would have to be perfectly in phase with one another, and since they would need to be travelling at different speeds in order to interfere if or when that does happen it would be momentary and not cumulative IE the two combine into one and that one continues on at 2Xs the size. Instead they will interact then continue on at their individual frequency. It is more likely to actually see the combined amplitude of two waves when they travel in opposite directions.