Mike Monett wrote:
"Tom Donaly" wrote:

[...]

Most undergraduate physics texts have, or should have, discussions
of vibrating strings. There's a good treatment of the subject in
William C. Elmore's and Mark A. Heald's book _Physics of Waves_
published by Dover.

If you wanted to get in an argument you could say that the energy
on both sides of the node isn't traveling, but is merely
alternating between potential and kinetic.

Yes, I thought about that a bit before posting. It seems logical a
plucked string sends a wave in both directions, where it is
reflected and returns to create a standing wave.

When it forms a standing wave, it seems reasonable to say the energy
is alternating between potential and kinetic. But isn't that similar
to what happens on a transmission line that is exactly some multiple
of a quarter wavelength long?


Demo 4 of the TLVis1 program I posted reference to, shows that in a
transmission line with a pure standing wave (load reflection coefficient
magnitude of 1), the energy between nodes alternates between the
electric field (line capacitance) and magnetic field (line inductance).
This is true regardless of the line length or the source termination.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL