April+29

Today 4/29/09 in Mr. Manning’s 4th period Physics class we started by getting a new handout from the front of the room about a lab we are going to start on “The Speed of a Wave” and a half sheet of paper for a graded daily question. The daily question was a calculation on finding the air temperature when given the frequency and the wavelength of a wave. After about 8 minutes, Mr. Manning collected the half sheet to grade it. We went over the problem and had an opportunity to as any questions about the question and how to get to the answer so that we were sure we understood how to do the problem. After that we had a homework assignment with calculations of wavelength, speed, temperature, and frequency. We took several minutes to go over the answers and ask questions and to see the problems worked out. Mr. Manning then began introducing us to standing waves, giving definitions and examples on the computer with animations and then in the classroom using a slinky. After the class had a good idea about standing waves we moved on to preparing for the lab we are going to do tomorrow with standing waves. We made a chart showing harmonic, a pattern, number of antinodes, number of nodes, and the number of wavelengths. Mr. Manning gave us class time to work on filling out the chart and then went over the entire thing. We finished class by answering two questions about standing waves to help us get thinking for tomorrow’s lab.