Simulating Boundary Behaviour of Transverse Waves in Strings using SCILAB

Pragati Ashdhir, Nishant Goyal, Mritunjay Tyagi

Hindu College

The boundary effects are integral to any kind of wave motion whenever travelling waves encounter an obstacle or a change in the medium of propagation. They are known to be responsible for some of the well known phenomena like echoes, radar detection or sound production in musical instruments. In this work simulation of the boundary behaviour of transverse waves along a string is done. The effects arising due to rigid boundary conditions, free boundary conditions, real (neither free nor rigid) boundary conditions and impedance discontinuity (change in medium) conditions have been discussed.These simulations can be used as visual aids or tool kits to make the traditional methods of teaching and learning of the underlying physics concepts more effective. SCILAB, an open source computational software has been used for numerical calculation, simulation and animation as needed. The target group of the present work are the students and teachers of the introductory undergraduate level Physics.