4-24-09

On the date Friday, April 24th, Mr. Manning started class by requesting that everyone hand in their calculations for the design-a-ride project. Next he said that the class would be learning about sound waves. His first demonstration required turning the lights off. He then turned on a strobe light and proceeded to ask anyone if they could get seizures, nobody said yes. He set the strobe light to a certain flashes per second, picked up a wooden dowel with a ball on the end and struck a tuning fork. This demonstration was to show the vibrations of the tuning fork. He turned the strobe light off and the regular lights on, and then he did another demonstration with tuning forks. Except he would hit it with the wooden dowel, then place it on the table to make it hearable for the entire class. The vibrations, he explained, go from the tuning fork onto the table, vibrating the table, which made it louder for the class to hear. The he showed the class a “homemade train whistle” which was about 2 feet long. Then he used the train whistle and the tuning forks to explain, how wavelength affects the frequency. The longer the wavelength the lower the frequency will be and the shorter the wavelength, the higher the frequency will be. Then he shows a segment of a show on sound waves demonstrated by the infamous Julius Sumner Miller. The final demonstration was of him changing the frequency on high and low pitch sounds.