Question #e28e4
1 Answer
It can
Explanation:
Transverse waves are literally "the waves", like the ones on the beach.
Maybe you mean through as in "inside" the medium, not above. Because fluids and gases are made of loosely packed particles, waves inside them can propagate. However, the concept of transverse doesn't make sense.
Transverse relies on some kind of unidirectional force to pull the particles back to their original state.
(wave analogy: water goes up, gravity pulls it back down).
But let's take a particle surrounded by other particles. What will happen is that if it initially moves the same way as a particle in a longitudinal, instead of getting pulled back down to where it began by 1 force, it's gonna bounce off a nearby particle. And then it's going to bounce around the other particles, causing them to get excited (that's actually the scientific term) and move around in a pattern that propagates outwards.
Then that's the definition of a longitudinal, or compression wave. The particles transmit energy by bunching up and hitting each other, then bouncing off to hit new particles.
So it's easier to look at it this way- transverse waves mean surface waves and longitudinal waves mean medium (compression) waves.
