WAVE FRONT Definition & Meaning

wave front

noun

Physics.

a surface, real or imaginary, that is the locus of all adjacent points at which the phase of oscillation is the same.

wave front

The set of points in space reached by a wave or vibration at the same instant as the wave travels through a medium. Wave fronts generally form a continuous line or surface. The lines formed by crests of ripples on a pond, for example, correspond to curved wave fronts.

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�y��vlog History and Origins

Origin of wave front¹

First recorded in 1865–70

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

When researchers shine an x-ray beam through a sample, variations in the material will delay the wave front of the coherent x-rays to different degrees, creating a mottled intensity pattern on a distant detector.

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“It's wave front stuff; this is the edge of science,” said Andrew Ellington, a biochemist at the University of Texas at Austin who was not involved in the research.

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Like evenly spaced water waves lapping on a beach, the light waves in the reference beam arrive in flat wave fronts.

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If you send light produced in this way through a dispersive medium, Einstein predicted, the wave fronts should be deflected if the emission process were classical.

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As it traveled towards land, ocean ridges and undersea mountains pushed the wave fronts together, keeping the tsunami stable even as it hurtled towards the coast.

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