Wave Interface Simulation

1) A drop at 50% amplitude and a frequency at 20% has a wave length of 3.7 cm

    A drop at 100% amplitude and a frequency at 20% has a wave length of  cm 3.15 cm

2)  A drop at 50% amplitude and a frequency at 20% has a wave length of 3.7 cm

     A drop at 50% amplitude and a frequency at 50% has a wave length of 1.63 cm

3) Therefore:

      - When frequency is constant, an increase in amplitude causes a minor decrease in wave length.

      - When amplitude is constant, an increase in frequency causes a significant decrease in wave length.

4) There are now two faucets and both are set at a at 50% amplitude and a 50% frequency.

       - Wave length 1.6.

Refer to the picture so the following information makes sense. Also note that the top faucet will be referred to as "Faucet A" and the bottom faucet will be referred to as "Faucet B". We will be measuring the distance from where the drops enter the water to eight color-coded points which represent the high points of the water created by the waves.

Color of Dot	Black	Red	Grey	Brown	Green	Blue	Purple	White
Distance from “Faucet A”	6 cm	3 cm	4.5 cm	3 cm	5.5 cm	6 cm	6 cm	7.5 cm
Distance from “Faucet B”	9 cm	6 cm	6 cm	5 cm	3 cm	5 cm	3 cm	6 cm

The important thing to notice here is that while each point has a different distance from each faucet they are all divisible or close to divisible by 1.5. This is important because it reemphasizes the fact that wave lengths are consistent enough to be considered a unit of measurement.

* The measurements that are not divisible by 1.5 are technical errors due to inaccuracies in the program.
* I am working on adding a picture of the program I was using to make it easier to understand what I'm talking about.

"Wave on a String" Simulation

Question one:  Which takes more energy, slow up and down, or fast up and down?
Answer: The faster you move, the more energy you burn.


Question two: Does fast frequency correspond with low energy or high energy?
Answer: High frequency requires more energy as there is more movement.


Question three: What is the frequency of the provided (frequency 27, amplitude 50) wave in Hz?
Answer: Hz = cycles/seconds
             Hz = 1/1.02
             Hz = 0.98


Question four :  What is the frequency of the provided wave(frequency 100, amplitude 50) in Hz?
 Answer: Hz = cycles/seconds
              Hz = 1/ 0.27
              Hz = 3.70




Question five:  What is the frequency of the provided wave (frequency 27, amplitude 100) in Hz?
 Answer: Hz = cycles/seconds
              Hz = 1/0.52
              Hz = 1.92




Question six:  What is the frequency of the provided wave (frequency 27, amplitude 50) in Hz?
 Answer: Hz = cycles/seconds
              Hz = 1/ 0.49
              Hz = 2.04




Question seven:  What is the frequency of the provided wave (frequency 100, amplitude 50) in Hz?
 Answer: Hz = cycles/seconds
              Hz = 1/ 0.13
              Hz = 7.69


Question eight: Describe the relationships between energy, frequency and wavelength. Include descriptions for relationships of all three.
Answer: The higher the frequency, the larger the wave length and the more energy the movement requires.

Explaining the measurement "mol"

We are all familiar with terms for common measurements of daily objects. The most common example would be the term dozen most commonly used when referring to eggs. If asked "how many eggs are in a dozen" most people would know it means there are 12 eggs. But why do we not simply say 12 eggs?

If I asked you to picture 1,080 eggs, you would probably have a vague picture of a lot of eggs. It is much easier to think of 1,080 eggs as 90 dozen eggs. Similarly, it is much easier to imagine one mile as apposed to 5,280 feet.

When measuring or counting things at the molecular level, we deal with very LARGE numbers. It is very difficult to picture numbers in the trillions, quadrillions or larger. Because of this we use 6.02 x 10^23 (one mol) to represent a large amount of atoms, nanometers, cells, etc. For example instead of saying there are 602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 naometers in something, its much easier to say there is one mol of nanometers in something.

Molecular Structure of NaCl (Table Salt)

Clear beads represent chlorine (Cl)
Blue beads represent sodium (Na)
*The scale of this model is 1 cm = 0.095 nm


Dimensions of the Unit Cell:
        -0.004 Meters^3
        - 4 centimeters^3
        - 4 million nanometers^3
        - 40 million angstroms^3
Mass - 0.00031 grams
Moles - 5.3 x 10^-6


Molecules in one cube - 3.19 x 10^ 18
Dimensions of cube - 629,603 nanometers^3
Unit cells in a cube - 4.5 x 10^ 18

Description of a Nanometer

Think of a single human hair. How do you measure the length of a hair? Probably with a common ruler. How would yo measure the width of a human hair? You can use a ruler, hair is to thin. Using any of the measurements you learned in grade school, it seems impossible. Nanometers are used to measure objects the size of atoms but the size of an atom is not something we are all familiar with. Therefore, we will use a human hair as an example and put it to a scale that makes more sense.

Depending on the thickness of a persons hair, it can range from 50-100 thousand nm in width. But what does that look like? Take an air-soft pellet. Each is about .5 cm wide. If you were to place 10 next to each other, you would have 5cm which, according to our scale, represents 10 nm. If you were to place 50,000 of them next to each other  you would have a to-scale model of the width of a human hair. This would measure 25 meters in width. This model is 5,000,000 times the size of an actual human hair!