The task & goals
This is a common type of prompt in intro physics -- trying to get a slinky, perhaps, to transmit a wave at a faster speed, and recognizing that the speed of a wave depends only on properties of the medium and is independent of how it it produced.
What I'm not crazy about: a student who is thinking causally and mechanistically about the production of a wave could likely reason that a stronger "push" on air particles should make the wave propagate faster. And while I can imagine collecting data about this, it's hard for me to think of a mechanistic reason -- a story that makes sense -- for the secondary student.
Student responses
This student is using a formula but without thinking about what is a constant and what can vary.
This student is thinking mechanistically but not coherently -- thinking through how we hear music is a useful way to have experiential data to draw from when answering the question. However, music doesn't get garbled when one note is louder than another.