Journal Activity Questions

1. The term “wave” has more than one meaning in everyday language. List as many different meanings of the word wave as you can.

2. What is a wave? Describe a wave in your own words.3. List as many types of waves and/or examples of waves as you can. 4. Look at your answers to question #3. What do all of your examples

have in common?5. Now consider the specific example of a sound wave. List all the

ways you can think of to make a sound wave.6. What, if anything, do all of your examples of ways to make sound

have in common?7. How do you think sound gets from one place to another? That is,

how do you think sound travels?8. What types of materials do you think sound travels through? What

evidence do you have to support your answer?

Journal Activity Questions

Waves and Energy

Key Idea #1: Waves have energy and transfer energy when they interact with matter.

A wave is a disturbance that transfers energy from place to place.Types of waves:

water wavesseismic waves sound waves electromagnetic waves

Many waves require a material called a medium to travel through.

A medium can be a solid, liquid, or gas. Examples include:

airwaterearthropeslinky

FYI:In the animation above, the medium is a series of particles connected by springs. 

As one individual particle is disturbed it transmits the disturbance to the next interconnected particle and then returns to its initial position. 

This disturbance continues to be passed on to the next particle and so on. 

The result is that energy is transported from one end of the medium to the other end of the medium without the actual transport of matter (the springs).  Each particle returns to its original position.

http://electron9.phys.utk.edu/phys135d/modules/m10/waves.htm

Waves that require a medium are called mechanical waves.

Examples of mechanical waves: water wavesseismic wavessound waves

scienceblogs.comhttp://www.sciencelearn.org.nzcnx.org

Types of Mechanical Waves

TransverseLongitudinalSurface Waves

Note: See book pages 16-17.

Transverse Wave

http://www.kettering.edu/physics/drussell/demos.html

academia.hixie.ch

Pick a single particle and watch its motion.

Transverse Waves

Longitudinal Wave

•http://www.kettering.edu/physics/drussell/demos.html

Pick a single particle and watch its motion.

Longitudinal Waves

FYI: Surface Waves are combinations of transverse and longitudinal waves.occur at the surface between two mediums, such as water and air.up-and-down and back-and-forth movements combine to make each particle of water move into a circle.

Water waves move outward from a disturbance.

cnx.org

A disturbance transfers energy to the water creating waves/ripples.

Waves travel through the water but they don’t carry the water with them.

FYI: (also see figure #1 on page 15)

When a wave moves under a floating object, the object moves up and down but not along the surface with the wave. After the wave passes, the water and the object return to where they started.

reefnews.com

FYI: Breaking waves at a beach are different. Near the shore, the water does move along with the wave due to the upward slope of the beach. The top of the wave gets bigger until it eventually topples over.

sln.org.uk

Light and heat energy travels from the sun through empty space in the form of electromagnetic waves.

Infrared waves provide heat energyVisible light waves provide light energy

ucsd.tv

Electromagnetic waves are not mechanical waves because they do not require a medium to travel through.

ucsd.tv