Wave Simulator

The wave simulator was a really cool way to observe wave behavior. When we tested waves in class, we had to observe with the naked eye and sometime didn't catch everything we needed. With the wave simulator, you can catch everything that happens and it also shows you a little graph of whats going on. You can pause it and look at the measurements and adjust the frequency and wavelength. Some of the things I observed while toying with the wave simulator was that the higher the frequency, the faster the wave moved. And that the size of the drop that came out of the little faucet had a huge effect on wavelength. It was really cool to observe the graph while this was going on and see how these things measured and not have to watch the waves on a little ruler in a big plastic tub. I'm really glad we found the wave simulator because I think once I play with it a little more it could be really handy for labs. Its also easy to take home so if you don't finish all your tests in class you can still have an accurate test and information.

Stress around the world

Today in class we had to highlight specific plates on earth where the tectonic plates make certain kinds of stress. I used pink for compression, yellow for tension, and orange for shearing. We were somewhat predicting the paths of the plates and what areas will be hit when the plates collide. All of our maps are slightly different and we all interpenetrated the map in different ways. While working on this I noticed that there were mainly tension quakes across the world. Tension is when the stress force pulls at the rock and makes it weaker in the middle. It occurs when two plates are moving apart. Tension quakes mostly occurred on the ocean or near the coast line. The next most popular type of stress was compression. Compression occurs when the plates squeeze the rocks until it folds or breaks. Compression quakes occurred mainly on the coast line of the pacific and Indian ocean. Although this wasn't the most common type of stress, using other research I discovered that it made the most powerful quakes. The type of stress that occurs the least was shearing. Shearing is when the plates push rocks in two separate directions. Shearing quakes occurred mainly in the ocean and on the coast line of North America. It was really cool to see what types of quakes occurred where. I know now that the type of stress I would have been feeling in Seattle would have been shearing and the kind I would feel in Serbia or Switzerland would be compression. Tracking quakes was really fun and I can imagine it would be a pretty interesting job.

wave lab

Guiding Question: How do waves travel in various liquids???

Hypothesis: I think that the thickness or density of the various liquids will effect the way the waves travel. The thicker or denser the liquid is that harder it will be for the waves to travel and the less dense the liquid the easier it will be for liquids to travel.

Materials: Honey, hand sanitizer, soda, salt water, and regular water

Procedure: I’m going to fill the tub with the various liquids and use something like clay to create a disturbance. I’m going to time how fast the wave travels and how long it takes for it to get from one side of the tube to the other. Using honey, hand sanitizer, soda, salt water, and normal water I’m going to observe the behavior and calculate the frequency of waves

materials	observations	Frequency
Honey	Really won’t make waves and is so thick that	0
Hand sanitizer	Doesn’t make waves! (too dense?)	0
Soda	A little less than 1 wave per second. (Bubbles??)	1
Salt water (100 mL)	About 1 waves per second (same as water)	2
Water	About 2 waves per second	2

Observations: I knew form the begging that the density would play a huge part in the way waves traveled through a liquid and therefore the frequency. I had predicted that the honey would make either really slow waves or no waves at all and that the water was going to make really nice high frequency waves. The soda and salt water I had predicted to act a lot like the water but it was the hand sanitizer that surprised me. I had expected it to make really slow low frequency waves and act more like water then honey. But instead it didn’t make any waves at all and was on heck of a cleanup. The honey would do anything and didn’t make anything even resembling a wave. The salt water had the same frequency as water and the soda acted more like water but it had a lower frequency.

Data analysis: This was a fairly successful lab. I really noticed how the density affected the waves to the point where the liquid was so dense it couldn’t make waves.

Conclusion: How do waves travel in different liquids? From this lab I can definitely conclude that the density of an object really affects the frequency and wave behavior. My hypothesis was definitely correct. While I was doing my tests some of the honey was so dense that it stuck to my hands and when it finally dripped off my hands it landed on top of the other honey and then slowly sunk in to the blog rather than making a wave. And then other liquids like the salt water or soda acted just like the regular water and made a ton of waves and had a higher frequency. It wasn’t too surprising that the density would play a huge part in frequency and the way waves travel

Further inquiry: I feel like there were a lot of things that could have gone better. It’s really hard to count the frequency by yourself, so I feel like some of my data may be a bit off. Another things is that I didn’t measure the amount of liquid I put in every time so that could cause the results to vary. Overall I felt like this was a really successful lab and I want to find out how the density of a liquid effects the wave length and other components of a wave.

Seahawks fans' frenzy felt by seismometer

Sophie Moynihan
7b
Current Events

On Sunday January 9, the Seattle Seahawks played the New Orleans Saints at Quest feild in Seattle. Around 66,336 fans came to cheer on the seahawks and pray to the super bowl gods that their team would make it to the playoffs. A player for the Hawks names Marshal Lynch caught the ball and made a 67 touch down run. At this the ground jumped, stopped, and cheered to vigorously that it shook the stadium and some of the surrounding city, to an earthquake measuring to about 1 or 2 on the rector scale. Although the earthquake was only felt by those around the stadium or in downtown Seattle, the crowd caused aftershocks when the pass was re-played on the big screen. A scientist form the University of Washington named john Vidale was the first one to realize that what was going on was considered an earthquake. "The stands were shaking," said John Vidale, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington. "You probably would have felt it very easily if you were outside the stadium." Although this is the first time we have ever recorded a man made earthquake, there have been other cases where games have literally shaken up the town. During the world cup Scientists in Cameron reported rumbles due to the games going on. This just goes to show the power of humans.

I picked this article because 1) It was about the Seattle seahawks, and you gotta love them and 2) The fans jumping in the stadium made such strong waves that it caused an earthquake. I heard about this from my friend Emma who called me on skype to tell me the the seahawks had finally won a game and also that there had been a man made earthquake. It was a very exciting day in Seattle indeed.

Ball bounce-off

What happens to a wave as it hits a surface it cannot pass through

Does the energy (density of a ball) affect the waves path
For an in class assignment, we tested what would happen to a source of energy when it hits a surface it cannot pass. We took 3 different balls of different density's and put then up against the wall. The first ball we tested we made of packed Styrofoam. It was very light weight and had very little density. when we rolled it up against the wall it bounced right back in the same direction. We predicted that this was because it had very little density, it hit the wall with less force, so the opposite force was small. Next, we tested a marble. The marble was small but very dense and we knew that the results of this test were going to be very different then the Styrofoam. When we threw the marble, it came back at an angle that made a path that looked like a 1. This is something called the angle of reflection. The angle of reflection is the angle between the reflected wave and the imaginary perpendicular line. We predicted that this was because the marble was dense, so the opposite force was greater. Finally we tried the golf ball. This test was a lot like the one with the marble, because the golf ball was also dense and we knew that the results were going to be similar. When we tested the golf ball it made the same 1 shape because of the forces it was up against. From this test we can conclude that when a source of energy hits a surface it cannot pass through, the density will effect the force and the path the wave shoots back on.

Wave investigation

For our in class investigation we observed the behavior and how waves interact with each other when put up against one, two, or no barriers. My partner Marko and I used clay barriers and a tub of water to investigate. We started with no walls and watched what happened when the waves met each other. Both my partner and I were expecting when the waves met that they would fall apart and not go any farther, but instead they moved over each other and made these really cool patterns in the water until they hit the wall and bounced back again. We tried this several more times using different points and barriers and we can conclude that waves with no barriers with move freely and when they collide do not have much of an effect on each other. Next we experimented with what would happen to the wave when they met a barrier. Personally this was one of my favorite tests and also probably one of the most successful. Like with the free waves we tried our experiment from different angels and with different obstacles. We had predicted that once the waves hit the obstacle it would send them back the way they came like when the waves hit the wall of the tub. We had geared ourselves up to be splashed when surprisingly the wave split in two, avoided the barrier, and then slowly re-formed and hit the wall. This caused something called diffraction. We played with this for long time and found that no matter what the waves will always find a way to move around a barrier. Finally we tested how the waves would react when put up against two barriers. The results were a lot like our previous test with one barrier in the fact that they found a way to squeeze out and keep moving, causing diffraction. Then we got the idea to see what would happen to a wave in an unclosed space. we arranged the barriers in a corner and when we tested this we found that the waves take the shape of the enclosed space and continue moving, which surprised both Marco and I. We experimented with this for a while and found that that was the case no matter what the shape of the enclosed space.
Overall I think this was a really successful experiment. I learned a lot about the way waves move and had fun doing it. I'm glad we preformed an experiment instead of taking notes because I have a clear visual of how waves move and exactly how tough they really are.