Standing Waves

Physics homework for 4/1/15:

Standing Waves

        Today we did a lab involving standing waves. A standing wave is a set of waves that look like they are not moving or are stationary. The lab involved us using Super Slinky at the front of the classroom. Super Slinky was tied to one side near the desk and Miss Reid held the other end about 6 meters away. For the lab we did around a few trials (maybe five or six?) where we timed Miss Reid shaking the slinky for ten seconds to see how many waves were done in that time. Each time Miss Reid shook the slinky a different way, the first time she shook it relatively slowly and the slinky had one crest but by the end she was manically flailing just to create five bumps! Poor lady :(. We did this to see how wavelength and frequency were related and to see if either of these things affected the wave speed, which it didn't. We also took down the data during the lab and calculated the speed and all. Since the velocities were the same no matter the frequency and what not we concluded that neither frequency nor wavelength really affected the velocity at which a wave travels.

      What did I get from it though? I learned that if, say, wavelength goes down then the frequency goes up and vice versa but that in the end the only thing that can affect wave speed is the medium the energy travels through. I also learned that there are parts where waves are stationary which I really never noticed before, and these are called nodes. Also, I learned how the crest, trough, etc. are related and how it all makes up a wavelength. It also showed me how different the transverse wave was in comparison to the standing wave because with the transverse wave we did trials where timed how long it took for a wave to travel back and forth whereas with this lab we timed how many waves Miss Reid could do in 10 seconds. Finally, I learned that wavelengths are measured a certain way and that they look different from a diagram of a wave. A "S" shaped wave means it is one wave length but a "U" shaped one is half of a wave length.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNZ1C_BWEAM 

Plus an appropriate Japanese song called "WAVE" :D!!~~~

~~vuv *dances her way out of the blog post*~~