ASTR 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Radio Wave, Radar Gun, Blood Orange

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy
• Course: ASTR 101
• Professor: David Alan Hanes

Document Summary

Waves come in to shore perfectly regularly. If you float in place, you bob up and down as each wave passes, say once every 5 seconds. If you paddle out towards the incoming waves, you meet each wave sooner than expected, so your frequency of bobbing up and down increases perhaps once every 4 seconds. The wavefronts" reach your ear with a regular frequency. But if you walk towards the speaker, successive waves hit your eardrum sooner than expected, so they arrive with a higher frequency than expected. Your eardrum is set vibrating at a higher frequency than if you were at rest. The tone sounds higher in pitch than if you were at rest. If the surfer now paddles towards the shore, the waves affect her with reduced frequency (in the limit, she rides a wave" and experiences no up and down motion at all!)