Simulating a Wave Through a Crowd

A wave is a disturbance that transfers energy from one point to another.

Have you ever “done the wave” as part of a large crowd at a sporting event? The movement of the “wave” is a useful way to think about a wave. However, it is not a real wave because the people are not actually transferring energy to each other. It is an analogy for a wave—the “wave” is the disturbance (people standing up and sitting back down) that travels around the stadium.

Watch these videos to see examples of a wave created by people.

How would you describe the motion of an individual person compared to the motion of the wave?

Keyboard Shortcut	Action
Space	Pause/Play video playback
Enter	Pause/Play video playback
m	Mute/Unmute video volume
Up and Down arrows	Increase and decrease volume by 10%
Right and Left arrows	Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds
0-9	Fast seek to x% of the video.
f	Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key.
c	Press c to toggle captions on or off

Keyboard Shortcut	Action
Space	Pause/Play video playback
Enter	Pause/Play video playback
m	Mute/Unmute video volume
Up and Down arrows	Increase and decrease volume by 10%
Right and Left arrows	Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds
0-9	Fast seek to x% of the video.
f	Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key.
c	Press c to toggle captions on or off