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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