He of uncertain principles asks Which do you prefer: transverse waves, or longitudinal waves? The fact builder chimes in with a clarification of a common misconception.
Myself, certainly I’m going to go for transverse waves. Not only are all the cool waves transverse (well sort of), electromagnetic waves, gravitational waves, stadium waves, etc, but you can’t surf on a longitudinal wave.
And of course, how cool are gravitational waves? So cool they produce this mesmerizing action on a ring of particles:
Interestingly while light is often used as the quintessential example of transverse waves, (the example being give is usually that of plane waves of light) if you talk about light beams with finite diameter, longitudinal modes appear. (For example, see here) But I don’t fault my physics teachers for not teaching me this: learning physics is really just a series of less lying anyway isn’t it?