Quotes About Transverse

We can scarcely avoid the inference that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.

One conclusion which emerged from this imaginary operation was that all changes in electric and magnetic force (for instance, those caused by an oscillating circuit) sent waves spreading through space; and that these waves had the same transverse character, and the same speed, as light. 'We can scarcely avoid the inference', he wrote in a monumental sentence, 'that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.

Think of a Mexican wave travelling around a stadium (a Mexican wave is a transverse wave as the cycle of the motion is up and down, while the wave travels at right angles to that direction, round the stadium). The medium here is the mass of spectators who bob up and down. But they stay in their seat positions

Transverse waves usually have to travel along the edge of the medium – for example, on the top of the water that the wave passes through. For a longitudinal wave, the regular cycle is in the same direction as the wave moves forward, not at right angles. The medium is repeatedly squashed up and relaxed like a concertina, so what travels through it is a pattern of compression and rarefaction.