Journal Activity Questions

1. Journal Activity Questions 1. The term “wave” has more than one meaning in everyday language. List as many different meanings of the word wave as you can. 2. What is a wave? Describe a wave in your own words. 3. List as many types of waves and/or examples of waves as you can. 4. Look at your answers to question #3. What do all of your examples have in common? 5. Now consider the specific example of a sound wave. List all the ways you can think of to make a sound wave. 6. What, if anything, do all of your examples of ways to make sound have in common? 7. How do you think sound gets from one place to another? That is, how do you think sound travels? 8. What types of materials do you think sound travels through? What evidence do you have to support your answer?

2. Waves and Energy

3. Key Idea #1: Waves have energy and transfer energy when they interact with matter. • A wave is a disturbance that transfers energy from place to place. • Types of waves: • water waves • seismic waves • sound waves • electromagnetic waves

4. Many waves require a material called a medium to travel through. • A medium can be a solid, liquid, or gas. • Examples include: • air • water • earth • rope • slinky

5. FYI: • In the animation above, the medium is a series of particles connected by springs.  • As one individual particle is disturbed it transmits the disturbance to the next interconnected particle and then returns to its initial position.  • This disturbance continues to be passed on to the next particle and so on.  • The result is that energy is transported from one end of the medium to the other end of the medium without the actual transport of matter (the springs).  Each particle returns to its original position. http://electron9.phys.utk.edu/phys135d/modules/m10/waves.htm

6. Waves that require a medium are called mechanical waves. • Examples of mechanical waves: • water waves • seismic waves • sound waves cnx.org http://www.sciencelearn.org.nz scienceblogs.com

7. Types of Mechanical Waves • Transverse • Longitudinal • Surface Waves • Note: See book pages 16-17.

8. Transverse Wave Pick a single particle and watch its motion. http://www.kettering.edu/physics/drussell/demos.html academia.hixie.ch

9. Transverse Waves

10. Longitudinal Wave Pick a single particle and watch its motion. • http://www.kettering.edu/physics/drussell/demos.html

11. Longitudinal Waves

12. FYI: Surface Waves • are combinations of transverse and longitudinal waves. • occur at the surface between two mediums, such as water and air. • up-and-down and back-and-forth movements combine to make each particle of water move into a circle.

13. Water waves move outward from a disturbance. A disturbance transfers energy to the water creating waves/ripples. Waves travel through the water but they don’t carry the water with them. cnx.org

14. FYI: (also see figure #1 on page 15) • When a wave moves under a floating object, the object moves up and down but not along the surface with the wave. • After the wave passes, the water and the object return to where they started. reefnews.com

15. FYI: Breaking waves at a beach are different. • Near the shore, the water does move along with the wave due to the upward slope of the beach. • The top of the wave gets bigger until it eventually topples over. sln.org.uk

16. Light and heat energy travels from the sun through empty space in the form of electromagnetic waves. • Infrared waves provide heat energy • Visible light waves provide light energy ucsd.tv

17. Electromagnetic waves are not mechanical waves because they do not require a medium to travel through. ucsd.tv