Tag Archives: waves

Every once in a while we come across something that has the chance to make a real difference in the classroom in both engaging the students and making your life as a professor a little easier. We think this may be one of those times. Ripple tanks are such a wonderful way to teach your [...]

Tuning Fork Interference
Two waves, when traveling through the same medium, will superimpose upon one another, causing interference. In the case of sound, the two sounds will combine to form a single sound. This lab asks students to combine the sounds from two tuning forks (which each produces a simple sine wave vibration) and observe the [...]

Students investigate properties of mechanical waves using a "slinky" spring: wavelength, speed, reflection, standing waves, interference.

Good for grade levels 5 through 8

Required Equipment
Super Springy, Stopwatch, String, Masking Tape, Helical Spring

Acknowledgements: Thank you to Dwight "Buzz" Putnam for his assistance in developing this lab. Buzz is a 25 year veteran physics teacher at Whitesboro High School, New [...]

Waves on a Helical Spring
Students investigate properties of mechanical waves using a helical spring: wavelength, speed, reflection, standing waves, interference. Neither amplitude nor frequency affects wave speed. As wave frequency goes up, wavelength goes down, and vice versa. Wave pulses can interfere constructively (adding together when on the same side of the spring) or destructively.
 

Required [...]

It's the “wow” when kids realize the demo isn't just entertainment...“We can't drill to the center of the Earth, so how do we know about its crust, mantle, inner and outer core? How can we find the epicenter of an earthquake? I demonstrate how we make inferences as sound waves interact with boundaries. Students see [...]

Chapter 25 Lab #70: Students will use a computer to simulate important wave properties.

You may not be aware of it, but polarized light is all around you. Do you have an LCD flat screen television, a laptop computer, a calculator, or other liquid crystal display? Well then, you have been exposed to polarized light. Light reflected from non-metallic surfaces such as water, a polished table top, and glass is also partially polarized as is the light scattered by the earth’s atmosphere.

Good Vibrations An Exploration of Vibration, Sound, and Music
A wave is a disturbance that transports energy from one place to another without the transfer of matter. After a wave passes through a medium, there are no residual effects; the medium remains unchanged. For example, if you throw a stone in a pond, a circular wave [...]

We will demonstrate how sound waves are produced and reveal how they may be recorded and reproduced. Among the activities below are two that introduce students to analog sound recording. Growing up in the era of digital recording, most students are amazed to learn that sound can be recorded on an old fashioned record and reproduced with nothing more than a needle and a cardboard cone.