What is the relationship between wavelengths and frequencies?
What is it?
What is it?
For waves with fixed speeds, wavelengths and frequencies are inversely proportional to each other.
To see this, note that speed = wavelength * frequency
Intuitively, wavelength is the length of one wave (the crest to the trough, back to the crest); and frequency is the number of such waves in a second. Clearly, the product gives the speed of the wave.
Consider light - its speed is fixed. Depending on the frequency, the wavelength changes.
wavelength(red light) > wavelength(blue light) because
frequency(red light) < frequency(blue light)
In fact, the relationship is such that
wavelength(red light) * frequency(red light) = wavelength(blue light) * frequency(blue light)
The same goes with sound. Higher frequency sound waves have smaller wavelengths.