Written by: Caleb Cooper, Elizabeth Ficks, Katie Steinbrenner
Do you listen to the Radio? Have you ever wondered how the song, talk show, or news travels from the broadcasting station to the radio to your ears? Sine waves explain it all. They are the building block for all other sound.
Through the String Thing we are able to explain how sine waves work. Sine waves are a waveform with deviation that can be graphically expressed as the sine curve. The Sting Thing shows how two sine waves react when going in opposite directions. They then form a standing wave. It looks just like a regular wave that does not move, but vibrates in face.
Traveling waves are one or two sine waves traveling in the same direction. Superposition is when the waves cross. It applies to both standing and traveling waves. When two waves are in-phase, the amplitude is the sum of the two waves. Amplitude is the height from the node to the anti-node. Nodes are where the wave has little to no motion at all. The anti-nodes are the maximum amount of motion in the wave. When two waves are out of phase then the destructive interference cancels the wave out and there is little to no motion.
Wavelength is the distance of one cycle from one node to the next. Tension in the String Thing represents the change in frequency. As tension, otherwise known as frequency, is increased, the number of waves increases. Radios use frequency between three thousand and three billion hertz. Hertz are the wavelengths and meters divided into three million. Different stations use different frequencies to distinguish their specific signal.
As you can see, sine waves are a part of our daily life. This is evident
through the
String Thing. Sine waves are the building block for all other sounds.
Work Cited
http://kestral.nmt.edu/~raymond/classes /ph13xbook/node5.html
http://www.tpub.com/neets/book2/1g.htm
http://www.gmiledu/~drussell/Demos/superpostion.html
http://interface.cipic.ucdavis.edu/CIL_tutorial/3D_phys/sines.htm