The task & goals

This draws from work (by ___) that looks into how students make sense of the relationships between characteristics of waves. It requires students to think about which relationships are independent, and which ones are not. Students may need to make some assumptions (reasonable ones). 

I'd like to change the prompt to read "below are representations of two different waves traveling in air."

Student responses

The two responses, below, both identify B, E, F & G as correct answers. I'm interested in the different ways students think about the first free resposne question.

For "B" to travel further in this image, the student is likely thinking of the wave not as moving straight but more like the path an ant might take in tracing out this sine wave.

The student thinks of time as fixed -- and so is essentialy describing the frequency of the wave.