Sound waves are the same as the physical waves we already learned about, but there's a lot to talk about so they get their own lesson. You can think of sound waves as a traveling wave of air pressure, while the individual air molecules themselves only oscillate back and forth and don't travel with the wave. When an instrument or a speaker oscillates and produces sound waves, the wave travels to your eardrum. Your eardrum oscillates at the same frequency, allowing you to hear the sound.
Have you ever noticed that when a police car, ambulance, or race car drives by you the pitch of their siren or engine seems to get lower? That's the doppler effect in action. We'll learn how a moving sound source or observer actually changes the wavelength, frequency and pitch of sound waves.
We'll also cover how sound waves interfere with each other the and interesting effects that produces.
Lab 1 - Sound Waves (PhET)
Lab 2 - Wave Interference (PhET)
PhET, William McCormick
Lab - Resonance and the Nature of Sound
(Pages 54-55, "Fundamental frequency")
empty 2L plastic bottle, tubes of different lengths (or more bottles of different sizes)
Holt Physics - Laboratory Experiments
Lab - Sound Waves
(Pages 125-135)
two different tuning forks, sound generator, two identical glass bottles, golf ball, resonance tube filled with water, marker, meterstick
Openstax - High School Physics Lab Manual - Student Version
Sound waves are the same as the physical waves we already learned about, but there's a lot to talk about so they get their own lesson. You can think of sound waves as a traveling wave of air pressure, while the individual air molecules themselves only oscillate back and forth and don't travel with the wave. When an instrument or a speaker oscillates and produces sound waves, the wave travels to your eardrum. Your eardrum oscillates at the same frequency, allowing you to hear the sound.
Have you ever noticed that when a police car, ambulance, or race car drives by you the pitch of their siren or engine seems to get lower? That's the doppler effect in action. We'll learn how a moving sound source or observer actually changes the wavelength, frequency and pitch of sound waves.
We'll also cover how sound waves interfere with each other the and interesting effects that produces.
