wave theory
Americannoun
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Also called undulatory theory. Physics. the theory that light is transmitted as a wave, similar to oscillations in magnetic and electric fields.
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Historical Linguistics. a theory that accounts for shared features among languages or dialects by identifying these features as innovations that spread from their points of origin to the speech of contiguous areas.
noun
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the theory proposed by Huygens that light is transmitted by waves
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any theory that light or other radiation is transmitted as waves See electromagnetic wave
Etymology
Origin of wave theory
First recorded in 1825–35
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
To better understand how the system behaves, the researcher used linear wave theory to model the interaction among ocean waves, the floating structure, and the gyroscope.
From Science Daily
The effect is of a droplet that appears to walk along a rippled surface in patterns that turn out to be in line with de Broglie's pilot wave theory.
From Science Daily
The question lingered for two centuries until James Clerk Maxwell’s profound and leucippitous discovery that light favors Huygens’s wave theory.
From Scientific American
Statistical mechanics tells you how the molecules of matter wiggle; the wave theory of light implied that these molecular wiggles somehow cause ripples of radiation—light waves.
From Literature
Rather more people, though, know that he had something to do with the wave theory of light.
From Literature
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
