Question

State whether true or false. Waving a hand means the hand acts as a wave.
A) True
B) False

Answer 1

A hand wave is a friendly way to say “hi” or “bye” to a person. In physics, we can describe a wave as a disturbance that is carried further in a medium. In general, a wave can transfer energy from one point to another point in a medium. However, the transfer of energy will not include the transfer of matter itself.

Complete step by step solution:
Step 1: Describe how waving a hand is similar to a wave in physics.
People usually wave their hands to greet each other or to say goodbye to one another. A hand wave is generally considered as a non-verbal gesture of communication used to acknowledge another person’s presence or to get someone’s attention.
When a person waves his or her hand in the air, the surrounding particles in the air will get disturbed. Thus we can say that a wave gets created when someone waves their hands whatever maybe the intention of the hand wave. However, the hand itself will not act as a wave. So the given statement that waving a hand means hand acts as a wave is not true.

So, the correct option is B.

Note: Here each individual particle in the air will get temporarily displaced from their respective equilibrium position as the hand moves in the air but the particles will eventually come back to their original position. The hand itself does not move, only the disturbance it causes gets carried further. A similar disturbance is more visual in a stadium wave. In a stadium wave, every fan will rise and then suddenly return to his or her seat consecutively, thereby producing a visual wave.