Final answer:
Traveling waves move energy through space, while standing waves appear stationary with fluctuating nodes and antinodes. Transverse waves have perpendicular particle displacement to wave travel, while longitudinal waves have parallel displacement.
Step-by-step explanation:
The differences between traveling waves and standing waves involve energy movement and wave stability. Traveling waves transport energy from one location to another, continuously moving through space, such as ripples on a water surface. Standing waves, on the other hand, occur when waves reflect and interfere with each other within a medium, forming a pattern that appears to stay in place, such as the waves on a plucked guitar string.
Transverse waves and longitudinal waves describe the direction of particle displacement relative to the wave's propagation. In transverse waves, particles move perpendicularly to the wave's direction of travel, like light waves or waves on a string. For longitudinal waves, the particles move parallel to the wave's propagation, seen in sound waves where fluctuations in pressure transmit through the medium.
To illustrate the concept of standing waves and how they differ from traveling waves, one must consider wave envelopes for the first three standing waves (although the actual drawing from a lab manual can't be provided here). A standing wave's envelope shows nodes, where the displacement is always zero, and antinodes, where the displacement reaches a maximum. As the harmonic number (n) increases, the number of nodes and antinodes within the wave also increases.