The Day o' Tests

Physics D, F and Honors Physics had their Chapter 11 - Vibrations and Waves exam. For D Block, this exam fell during their long block, so the second half of the period was dedicated to working on a lab investigation about sound. Folks produced sounds with tuning fork and saw very clean sine curves when the tuning fork was struck lightly and a more complex waveform when it was struck more sharply. The FFT graph showed one frequency for a soft strike and multiple frequencies for a hard strike. According to the law of superposition, waves can exist at the same place at the same time and the resultant is the combination of all of them, which is why multiple waves being received by the microphone produced a complex form. On Monday, we'll complete the lab and allow people to see the waveforms produced by their voice and by an electronic phone dialer. Honors Physics and Physics F will start with lecture material for sound.

Intro Physics reviewed their Work and Energy exam and then turned attention to heat and temperature. We defined temperature, differentiated from the ideas of hot and cold, broached the concept of thermal expansion and explained how that property of matter explained expansion gaps in bridges, how hot air balloons are filled and how thermometers function. On Monday, we'll turn attention to temperature scales and methods of heat energy transfer.