*Properties are characteristics / qualities / traits / characteristics.

This page describes some of the qualities of waves.

Waves have oscillating motion.

Oscillate means to move back and forth.

Waves travel through a medium.

A medium is what a wave travels through. For example, sound waves travel through air. Ocean surface waves travel through water. Seismic waves travel through the solid rock in the earth. A guitar string or a rope or a slinky can also be a wave medium, since any of those things can have waves.

Waves have crests and troughs. These are the high and low points of a wave.

Wave amplitude is the distance from a crest to the center line. For an actual wave, the center line represents the natural resting position of the medium (such as a spring or rope ) if it didn’t have any energy associated with wave motion.

Wavelength is the distance between wave crests.

Amplitude is not the distance from crest to trough. That distance would be twice the amplitude.

Wave speed for a traveling wave is how fast a crest is traveling through its medium. It has velocity units such as m/s.

Wave frequency is the number of crests that pass through a stationary location. Frequency units are cycles per second, also known as Hertz (Hz).

Wave period, T,  is the amount of time it takes for one cycle to complete. The period is the reciprocal (inverse) of the frequency:
f = 1/T, or,
T = 1/f