Rope Wave Lab

Miona Milenkovic

29. May

Science 7A

Mrs. Medenica

Wave Lab

Guiding question: If you had a restricted area of moving your hand, how does the space you have to move affect the altitude, wavelength and wave frequency?

Hypotheses: I think that when I have a smaller area the frequency will be higher, but the wavelength shorter. And when I move my arm slower the frequency will be lower but the wavelength longer. Also when I have a smaller area the amplitude will be smaller and the other way around

Variables:

• Control (What you keep the same): The rope will stay the same during the whole procedure (lab)
• Manipulated (What you will change):   The amount of space you have to move your hand
• Responding (What response you are looking for): We are looking for the altitude, wavelength and wave frequency to be different.

Materials:

1. Rope
2. Measuring device (ruler or meter stick)
3. Tape
4. Markers
5. Camera (take pictures)

Procedure:

1.      Collect all the materials and find a wide and long hallway or any room.

2.      Lay the rope straight on the floor and tape one side of the rope.

3.      Pick 5 measurement which you will use, like having 30, 40, 50 etc centimeters to movie your arm.

4.      Take your data, measure the frequency, amplitude, ……

Graphs and Tables

Images/Video:

This image shows how we set up our experiment. So as you can see, there is the rope which is taped on one side. As well different pieces of tape for the amount or are we can move our hand and the direction we are moving it.

Data Analysis:

In my graph I can see a couple of patterns. First of all, I can see that whenever the wavelength is higher, the amplitude is smaller. However I think that was on accident because I know that the wavelength does not affect the amplitude and the amplitude does not affect the wavelength.  However a pattern that a I also saw is quite logical. I realized that the more space you have for your arm to move, the frequency will be higher. For example, when I only had 10 centimeters to move my hand, I got 103Hz, and when I had 100cm to move my hand, it was only 50Hz. The reason why is because I need more time to create one wave when I need to go a farther distance. However when my arm moves a shorter distance it can create more waves during one minute. I really think that our experiment could have been more accurate. There are some parts which are not very precise. For example, the graph with the amplitude and wavelength. I don’t really think that the amplitude is always smaller when the wavelength is bigger. However that is one small slip

Conclusion:

In this experiment our guiding question was, if you had a restricted area of moving your hand, how does the space you have to move affect the altitude, wavelength and wave frequency? My graphs show the answer to that question. It shows that when you have more area to move your arm, the frequency will be lower, the amplitude and wavelength will be higher, and the opposite. However I don’t think that the wavelength and amplitude affect each other. However frequency affects wavelength and amplitude. When the frequency is higher the amplitude and wavelength is lower. I also see that the amplitude and the wavelength don’t affect the frequency of a wave. So as you can see my hypothesis was right all along.

Further Inquiry:

As I said above, I do see some errors and some places where we could have took more accurate data. However I think the reason why that happened was because Irina and I were rushing to finish up collecting our data so we could finish our lab write up. Some ways to improve is to maybe have more time together to finish, or Irina and I could be more effective, but the second way is probably better. J I also think that next time we should take care of our data, make sure that its correct and not just an estimation. Apart from all these little mistakes, I still think that my hypothesis is correct and I am still sticking with my same thoughts as before.