Wave lab

Guiding Question: How does the thickness of string affect the sound that goes through it?”

 Hypothesis: I think it will travel better through thicker strings

Variables:  I will keep the 2 plastic glass and the same length for each strings, but I will change and try different thicknesses of strings. And my response should be different forces of sound waves..

Materials: 2 plastic glass, one knife, Small sowing string, medium size string, thick string

Procedure:

1)    With a knife make on small holes at the bottom of both glasses

2)    Pass one of the type of string threw each hole and make a knot at each of it’s extremities.

3)    Test the “telephone” by talking threw it from one end and listening threw the other .

4)    Record the amount of sound it produced.

5)    Repeat the procedure with each different string materials you have

6)    Compare your data

Record and Analyze:

Thin sowing string: When we talked threw the “phone” we only received a weak amount of sound. We could hear each other but had problems understanding each other.

Medium string:  I heard a tiny bit better then with the thin string, but it didn’t make a very big difference.

Large string: The sound was a bit better then the thiner strings we could understand each other almost every time. Even if it didn’t make a huge difference with the medium size string.

Data Table

	Amount of sound
Thin sowing string	weak
Medium-large string	medium weak
large string	high weak.

    D.  Analysis of Data:   Do you see any patterns?  Do you believe that your data shows accuracy and precision?

I think that my data shows that the volume increases just a little bit with thicker strings. I think that my data could have been a bit better if I had an appropriate instrument to measure decibels, sadly I didn’t. It would have given me precise numbers to compare my data with.

VI.         Concept Acquisition (CONCLUSION):  State the guiding question.  Present the relevant experimental results.  Discuss the relationship between variables.  What can you conclude regarding the guiding question?  Was your prediction correct?  If yes, explain.  If no, explain what you understand now about this investigation and how it taught you something new.

My guiding question was ‘ How does the thickness of string affect the sound that goes through it? My hypothesis was that it will travel better through thicker strings, and I was correct but I thought that the thickness would have affected sound much more. There , the difference of volume was very small.

VII.       Concept Application (FURTHER INQUIRY):    Examine the validity of your data and infer what you think the major causes of error may have been.  Propose methods of improvement.  For example, what modifications did you need to make or would make next time? Whatever happens in a test, think about all the reasons for your results.  Sometimes this thinking leads to a new hypothesis.  Write down these new hypotheses (predictions) or inquiries (questions) you may have here in this section.

My only mistake was that I should have been more precise with the data by using an instrument to measure data. But I could have made more interesting by using more types of strings as : wet strings, cold strings, warm strings, extremely thick strings, elastics and even maybe different types of cups! As I would think that wet strings would work better and that cups wouldn’t make a difference.