What are longitude and transverse waves?
Good seismic waves. Pay a friend $5 for his or her time, and buy a slinky. Stretch out the slinky between yourself and your friend. Give the slinky a sharp push directly toward your friend, down the slinky’s axis. What you’ll see is that a compression between the pieces of slinky swirl will travel down — very visibly — to your friend. You can make another wave before the other one reaches the end. Another, another… how ever many you like. This a longitudinal wave or compression wave. Energy is transferred in a straight line, directly from one place to another place. It’s very effective and transferring that energy. Notice that the physical movement of the slinky was small. In the real world, there will be no movement, because the energy will be transferred from molecule to molecule. The slinky however still remains a good illustration. This is a P-wave. So let the slinky go quiet again. Now give your end a shake side to side. Strong or weak, it doesn’t matter (though strong will be
