Serway & Jewett — Wave Motion: Problem 4

You are working on a senior project and are analyzing a human “wave” at a sports stadium such as that shown in Figure P16.4 (page 446). You are trying to determine the effect of the wave on concession sales because people are standing up and sitting down while they participate in the wave, instead of buying food or drinks. You have made observations at a local stadium and have taken data on one particularly stable wave. This wave took 47.4 s to travel around a specific stadium row consisting of a circular ring of 974 seats. You also find that a typical time interval for spectators to stand and sit back down is 0.95 s. In this wave, how many people in the specific row were out of their seats at any given instant?