Question

Use the image below to answer the question.

Consider the waves in the image.



A photo shows the recording of seismic waves. Three vertical waves from left to right have irregular wave patterns with changing wavelength and amplitude. All three recordings are the same length horizontally but each one varies greatly vertically on the graph.
Which wave measure is changing by the greatest amount in the image?

(1 point)

speed

wavelength

amplitude

frequency
Skip to navigation

Answer 1

Amplitude.

The recordings have the same horizontal length (so wavelength and frequency are essentially unchanged), but the vertical variation (height of the peaks/troughs) changes most — that is the amplitude.