Ocean Waves and Sound Waves!

The next adventure the students and I embarked on was an up-close study of sound waves. Anyone who knows me, knows this is my passion! I have loved sound waves and all of the nitty-gritty physics of sound waves ever since my dad took me into his work when I was younger and showed me an oscilloscope. Then, in high school, I did my entire final physics project on the physics of music (this may have been a ploy to get to play with my dad’s oscilloscope again). Fast forward to my masters program where my final project was on tuning of all band instruments and how that relates to the physics of what’s going on with the ‘waves’ you hear when you are out of tune (another excuse to play with the oscilloscope!).

The students got to see sprinkles dance on a cup covered with plastic wrap, feel vibrations on crash cymbals, see vibrations when a violin string is plucked, experiment with putting tuning forks in water, checking out Kundt’s tubes when instruments play into them, discovering the beautiful artwork created by sound on chladni plates, and look at their voices on an oscilloscope.

We then compared what we could see about sound waves with what we knew about ocean waves. I showed the students videos of the Drake Passage crossing we did, and students enjoyed imagining themselves on a ship in those waves.