Traffic waves

[dar512]

Originally posted by Carbonated_Brains
Wave def'n: A disturbance traveling through a medium by which energy is transferred from one particle of the medium to another without causing any permanent displacement of the medium itself.

Just to be anal it's not a wave, because the cars (the medium) are moving permanently down the line. For it to be a wave, and it would be a longitudinal wave because you're describing compressions and rarefactions, the cars would have to drive forward, shift into reverse, and repeat!

The highway is the medium, the cars are the particles.

Actually this is exactly analogous to sound waves. Sound consists of layers of greater and lesser compression in the air.