The
rope is made up of a line of turtles. Each turtle acts as
it were connected to its neighboring turtles with springs.
When neighboring turtles are further away, they exert a stronger
force.
When
the left end of the rope (the green turtle) moves up, it "pulls
up" the turtle to its right, which in turn pulls up the turtle
to its right, and so on. In that way, a wave moves down the
rope. When the wave reaches the right end of the rope (the
blue turtle), the wave is reflected back to the left.
The
green turtle (at the left end) continues to put more energy
into the rope. If there were no friction in the rope, the
waves in the rope would keep getting bigger and bigger.
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