Every wave is characterised by some periodically changing disturbance. For example, that entity is air pressure for sound waves and electric,magnetic fields for EM waves. What is that disturbance for matter waves?
73243
If an electron is a wave, what is waving?   So many answers on the internet say "the probability that a particle will be at a particular location"... so... the electron is a physical manifestation of probability? That doesn't sound right.   This page  seems to suggest that the spherical wave pair is what gives the electron the properties of a particle. I could be misinterpreting, but this answer makes more sense to me - if only I understood what was waving!
105532
I'm trying to visualize how sound waves work and I was curious about something.   So sound moves in longitudinal waves, which I think I understand.  There is a really good  explaining this.  In the video the air particles are depicted as moving from left to right (longitudinally). But do they ever move up and down even a little bit? Are they on some kind of fixed axis where they can only move longitudinally and never move even the slightest bit in a vertical direction?
104341
Faraday's law states that "Any change in electric field induces a magnetic field and vice versa". I don't see exactly where these fields are induced, but I assume that these fields are induced at each and every point in space.  Now, let us consider a charge Q, moving with a uniform Velocity V. Obviously this movement of the charge creates a change in the electric field everywhere. As such it should induce a magnetic field.  Subsequently, this change in the magnetic field should also bring about an electric field, an induced one, owing to further changes induced in the magnetic field.   Apparently this machinery seems to be similar to an EM radiation. But we know that an EM radiation can only be produced by charges in accelerated movement. Why this chain of events can't be seen as an EM wave propagation?
9447
Electromagnetic waves can be shielded by a perfect conductor. What about gravitational fields or waves?
102265
The electromagnet spectrum looks to be continuous, yet energy is discrete. Shouldn't one see evidence of the electron's "quantum leap"? What's going on?     Moderator, please size my photo. Thank you.
62148
Why does  happen? In high school textbooks, it is stated that it happens because the speed that electromagnetic waves propagate in the media change. But why cant they continue propagating in the same direction with a different speed?
28454
In Representation of electromagnetic waves we show both electric and magnetic fields perpendicular to each other and having zero magnitude at one point and maximum at other point. This representation and understanding of EM waves violating law of conservation of energy...
75540
Pardon me for my stubborn classical/semiclassical brain. But I bet I am not the only one finding such description confusing.  If EM force is caused by the exchange of photons, does that mean only when there are photons exchanged shall there be a force? To my knowledge, once charged particles are placed, the electromagnetic force is always there, uninterruptedly. According to such logic, there has to be a stream of infinite photons to build EM force, and there has to be no interval between one "exchange event" to another. A free light source from an EM field? The scenario is really hard to imagine.  For nuclei the scenario becomes even odder. The strong interaction between protons is caused by the exchange of massive pions. It sounds like the protons toss a stream of balls to one another to build an attractive force - and the balls should come from nothing.  Please correct me if I am wrong: the excitations of photons and pions all come from nothing. So there should be EM force and strong force everywhere, no matter what type of particles out there. Say, even electrical neutral, dipole-free particles can build EM force in-between. And I find no reason such exchanges of particles cannot happen in vacuum.   Hope there will be some decent firmware to refresh my classical brain with newer field language codes.
2296
What happens to the energy when waves perfectly cancel each other (destructive interference)? It appears that the energy "disappear" but the law of conservation of energy states that it can't be destructed. My guess is that the kinetic energy is transformed into potential energy. Or maybe it depends on the context of the waves where do the energy goes? Can someone elaborate on that or correct me if I'm wrong?
102899
I was thinking about gravitational waves, and I found out that I may have a doubt about their production.  Assuming the whole calculations find a wave-like solution to be understood, I was wondering about the real reason/way by which gravitational waves are produced: I have always been taught that a wave is produced by a perturbation created by the motion of an object. Gravitational waves arises when huge massive bodies do perturb the space-time itself but here it's the unclear fact: it's the motion of masses itself that perturb the space-time? Because I'm having some hard times in understanding if gravitational waves are/are not produced simply by a moving massive body..  Because in this way, "we too" may produce gravitational waves (whose frequency would be extremely small).
115726
I'm reading some texts that seam to assume knowledge of light that I'm not too familiar with. How does wavelength of light relate to the minimum distance span that can be observed (i.e. you cannot make a lens big enough to resolve individual atoms), and is this a light phenomena or an intrinsic wave phenomena?
72320
I've been reading in Khan academy about the formula for calculating magnetic field lines (Ampere's law). Some materials have the ability to concentrate magnetic fields, which is described by those materials having higher permeability. The permeability of vacuum is $4\pi *10^-7$ , which means it can concentrate magnetic field lines. But how can nothing—no matter, energy, or force—influence or manipulate the waves passing through it (practically  through nothingness). I mean why is the permeability not 0? (This just comes out of the rigid intuition that vacuum does nothing to anything because it is nothing—ignoring the particle-antiparticle pairs or similar very distant stuff.)  As can be seen from the fuzziness of the question, I'm learning physics (not an expert) and any theoretical answer is okay but answers involving complex math like calculus or differentials are unwelcome but if it needs to be used let me be informed.
50114
How the electro-magnetic waves are produced by the accelerating charged particle? Graphical explanations are most welcomed. Is the explanation given by the below mentioned article correct regarding the movement of electromagnetic waves?
113794
If you have multiple waves of different frequencies, the interference from the different waves cause "beats".  (Animation from )    Let's say that a green dot in the above animation reaches your ear a few hundred times per second.   Is it possible to hear this phenomenon (wave groups occurring at frequencies in the audible range) as its own tone?
4005
Recently, I was reading about Hawking Radiation in A Brief History of Time. It says that at no point can all the fields be zero and so there's nothing like empty space(quantum fluctuation etc.). Now, the reason mentioned was that virtual(force-carrier) particles cannot have both a precise rate of change and a precise position(Uncertainty Principle).  So, my question is :  video says that virtual particles don't follow normal physical laws. So, how can we say that they obey the uncertainty principle?
87985
In electromagnetism, Maxwell's equations predict that electromagnetic disturbances travel at the speed $$c = \frac{1}{\sqrt{\mu_0 \epsilon_0}}.$$ Does general relativity predict that gravitational waves travel at the same speed or is this "put in by hand", that is, is there a wave equation with constants that presumably include the gravitational constant $G$ and other constants?
18693
In General Relativity Theory, mass can warp spacetime. However, in my view interaction only occurs between pieces of matter. Spacetime is not matter; how can it be affected by matter?