wave front

American  

noun

Physics.

1. a surface, real or imaginary, that is the locus of all adjacent points at which the phase of oscillation is the same.

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wave front Scientific  

1. The set of points in space reached by a wave or vibration at the same instant as the wave travels through a medium. Wave fronts generally form a continuous line or surface. The lines formed by crests of ripples on a pond, for example, correspond to curved wave fronts.

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Etymology

Origin of wave front

First recorded in 1865–70

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

wave front

If a sound wave, rising through the sub-zero temperatures below the upper jet stream, suddenly hit a layer nearly as warm as the earth's surface, the top of the wave front, he figured, would accelerate.

From Time Magazine Archive

If we can send out a spherical wave front, and have it lengthen rapidly as it proceeds, we will have a wave front that is, at all points, different.

From Invaders from the Infinite by Campbell, John Wood

So that any section of a spherical wave front will always be at right angles to the ray of light.

From Aether and Gravitation by Hooper, William George

The two men climbed slowly up the slope that had been the wave front of molten rock.

From Brood of the Dark Moon by Diffin, Charles Willard

What this apparatus, or ray screen, consists of, is a machine generating a spherical wave front of the nature of a molecular wave, but of just too great a frequency to do anything.

From Invaders from the Infinite by Campbell, John Wood