Waves & Sound

Need a simple, but effective, inquiry experiment to use with your classes? This might be the perfect place to start...simple harmonic motion! Ask your students to determine the factors that influence the period of a simple pendulum and let them go! You really do not need to do anything more...it is that easy. As I stated earlier, I use SHM with my students to introduce inquiry experiments to them at the start of the year. Here are a few of the experiments that I have created for this unit.

Speed of Sound Experiment This is not a true inquiry experiment, although I do not directly lead the students through the experiment. This is the classic resonance with tuning forks and plastic tubes exercise. I have found that my students love this lab, but the sounds from the tuning forks do get a little annoying after a while. Make sure your students spread out around your room, so that they are hearing their tuning fork resonances and not a nearby groups.

Simple Harmonic Motion Experiment-Springs Another experiment that is not a true inquiry experiment, but could be easily modified to be one. I use this one to get my students experience using springs and learning more about simple harmonic motion. A good experiment that incorporates graphs, calculations, and analysis.

Pendulum With a Twist Lab I hand this lab out to my students and tell them to get started and to make sure to follow the instructions explicitly (which they are not used to doing with me). The relationships with the variables lead to a slope of 9.8, but that is when the length is measured in inches and not analyzed correctly. Your students will eventually realize what is happening, but I am very unhelpful during the course of this experiment.

Simple Harmonic Motion Inquiry Experiment This is the my variation on the simple pendulum experiment. I asked a very creative student of mine to write up this scenario and I think she did an amazing job! A discussion between Aristotle and Galileo leads the students through an analysis of the motion of a simple pendulum. I used to use this as the opening experiment, but now I use it as the experiment in my waves unit...it is a great way to find out if your students have grown through their inquiry learning experience.