Heat and Waves

Physics A and B reviewed yesterday's work for heat transfer and then moved towards thinking about how clothing affects heat transfer in both summer and winter. Students are preparing an essay on how their clothing choices during those seasons reflects factors that influence heat transfer between the body and the environment.

Intro Physics has been working the concept of specific heat and covered the basic definition and formula yesterday in class. We looked at examples of how specific heat influences such situations as climate and drew the specific heat discussion into today's work with calorimetry. Calorimeters allow us to monitor heat transfer between objects in a system and work on the basis of conservation of energy. The problems you will be working for homework give you practice applying conservation of energy to real-world situations and Monday's lab work will use rudimentary calorimeters to monitor heat transfer in systems.

Honors Physics reviewed their lab on the period of a pendulum as class began, then moved to extending properties of vibrations to properties of the waves they produce. We looked at basic types of waves and how the concepts of amplitude, frequency and period are applied. We then added wavelength as another property of the oscillatory motion and emphasized that even though we look at vibrations to create waves, what waves carry is energy, not the vibrating material through which they move.