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roam
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Homework Statement
When you shine a light on the ripples in a tank you get dark and bright patches like this:
http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/4343/rippletank.jpg
So my question is: how do we count the number of waves?
In my experiment I am trying to find the wavelength by dividing the distance traveled by a train of waves by the number of waves in it. Do we have to count the number of bright fringes or the shadows?
The Attempt at a Solution
We are not trying to find the distance from one trough/crest to the next (that would be the wavelength). So, what is "one wave" in this case? How many waves are there in the picture I've posted (I can see 7 bright patches and 7 shadows)?
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