How to Study Waves and Optics: 136 Flashcards from the Wave Equation to Adaptive Optics
Deck CI4400 on Flip It: 136 waves and optics flashcards from D'Alembert to the Rayleigh criterion, plus the duplicates and wrong backs to fix first.
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Deck CI4400 "Waves & Optics" on Flip It holds 136 cards, and the fastest way to get through it is to notice that it is really two decks stacked on top of each other. Cards 1-72 are general wave physics; cards 73-136 are classical optics. Treat them as two study units and the deck stops feeling repetitive.
Study this deck: Waves & Optics
1 / 10Wave
Tap the card for the answer · swipe right if you knew it, left if not
What is actually inside
Wave block: periodic, travelling and standing waves, mechanical vs electromagnetic waves, scalar and vector fields, plane and sinusoidal plane waves, transverse vs longitudinal, the wave equation, D'Alembert's formula, wavelength, frequency, amplitude, envelopes, phase vs group velocity, nodes and antinodes, solitons, the Doppler effect, wave speed on a string, speed of sound, gravity waves, surface water waves, seismic P, S, Rayleigh and Love waves, shock waves, Maxwell, Schrödinger, de Broglie wavelength, wave packets.
Optics block: geometrical vs physical vs quantum optics, intromission and emission theories of vision, Young's double slit, Fermat's principle, specular and diffuse reflection, Lambert's cosine law, retroreflection, total internal reflection, fibre optics, focal length, the thin lens equation, chromatic and spherical aberration, the Huygens-Fresnel principle, interferometry, antireflective coatings, thin-film interference, diffraction gratings, X-ray diffraction, Bragg reflection, the Airy disk, the Rayleigh criterion, astronomical seeing, adaptive optics, Thomson, Rayleigh, Mie and Raman scattering, normal and anomalous dispersion, the Abbe number, linear and circular polarisation, chirality, the paraxial approximation, Gaussian beams, real vs virtual images.
Ten cards that set the level
| Front | Back |
|---|---|
| 'the' wave equation | Partial squared u over partial t squared = v squared times the Laplacian of u |
| D'Alembert's formula | u(x,t) = F(x − vt) + G(x + vt), two waveforms travelling in opposite directions |
| Group velocity | The velocity at which the overall shape of the wave's envelope propagates |
| Speed of a transverse wave on a string | v = sqrt(T/mu), T tension, mu linear mass density |
| State Snell's law of refraction | sin(theta1)/sin(theta2) = n2/n1, refracted ray in the plane of incidence |
| Refractive index of a medium | n = c/v, c the speed of light in vacuum |
| Basic diffraction equation | d sin(theta) = m lambda |
| Airy disk angular radius formula | theta = 1.22 lambda / D |
| Rayleigh criterion | Two points whose angular separation equals the Airy disk radius count as resolved |
| Anomalous dispersion | Index of refraction increases with wavelength, in ranges of significant absorption |
Fix four cards before your first session
- Delete the vague duplicates at the seam. Seven concepts appear twice, once as an empty definition in the wave block and once with the formula in the optics block: reflection (43/44 vs 84), Snell's law (47 vs 85), refractive index (46 vs 91), dispersion (53 vs 92), polarisation (21 vs 126), linear polarisation (51 vs 127), Newton's prism (54 vs 82, nearly word for word). Keep the version carrying a formula, suspend the other.
- Card 110 is wrong. It says Bragg reflection has "d being twice the spacing between atoms". In Bragg's law, n lambda = 2d sin(theta), d is the interplanar spacing; the factor of 2 comes from the two-way path difference. Rewrite the back with the equation.
- Card 104 misattributes Michelson. The Michelson interferometer is famous for the Michelson-Morley experiment and the absence of ether drift, not for measuring the speed of light.
- Cards 10 and 59 are a trap. "Gravitational waves" (ripples in spacetime) and "gravity waves" (buoyancy-restored waves in a fluid) are unrelated physics with almost identical fronts. Add a hint: "GR" on one, "fluids" on the other.
Where the deck stops
It is a vocabulary deck, not a problem set: barely ten cards carry an equation, polarisation arrives without Brewster's angle or Malus's law, and total internal reflection without the critical angle formula. Add those three yourself. Cards 68-72 (Maxwell, Schrödinger, de Broglie, wave packets) overlap with the modern physics deck, so skip them here if you have already done Modern Physics. For the mechanics foundations underneath, see Kinematics and the Laws of Motion.
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