Cecil Moore wrote:
"John Popelish" wrote:

The real revelation for me, from this discussion is how the concept of
"phase" takes a dimensional jump (from time to position) when you
change from taking about a traveling wave to the standing wave that
results from the superposition of a pair of oppositely traveling waves
of the same frequency.


Yet some people continue to argue that standing wave current is
the same in form and function as traveling wave current. There
certainly is quite a difference between cos(kz)*cos(wt) and
cos(kz+wt)

When the two waves combine, information is lost, just as when two DC
currents pass through the same wire. You can measure the total
current, but information as to what each of the original two currents
were, is lost. All you can say is that the two waves add to zero at
some points, and add to an alternating current (at the original
frequency) at some magnitude at other points. These measurements tell
you a lot about the two waves (their physical wavelength on the
conductor, for instance), but it doesn't tell you enough to
reconstruct both of them, completely, without some assumptions.