For the blog post, I used a slinky to demonstrate different types of waves and other things that we learned about waves in this unit. First, I demonstrated the difference between longitudinal and transverse waves. A longitudinal wave is when the oscillation is parallel to the direction of motion, and sound waves and pressure waves are examples. On the other hand, a transverse wave is when the oscillation is perpendicular to the direction of motion, and a rope wave or a light wave are examples.
When I pull part of the slinky towards me, this increases the tension of the slinky. We learned that as tension increases, so does the velocity of the wave, and I can confirm this by comparing the velocity of these waves to the initial ones, and I used approximately the same force on the slinky in both scenarios. Finally, I tried to create a standing wave, where there are clearly defined nodes and antinodes due to constructive and destructive interference and reflection. Although it definitely isn't perfect, the snapshot that I show looks pretty close to the third harmonic. In a closed-closed system, the wavelength of the third harmonic is 2/3 times the length of the slinky. The things we learned in the waves unit can apply to lots of things in life, from sound, to light, to the movement of a slinky and beyond. I think this video provides a summary of the most basic concepts of the unit, and they can be used to expand to the more complicated things like the Doppler effect or finding more harmonics.
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AuthorMy name is Kathleen Boyce and I am a 12th grader at Flint Hill School who is taking AP Physics I. Archives
April 2019
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