Standing Waves Lab Report

329 Words2 Pages
Physics 1408 Section E1 Standing Waves in a Vibrating Wire Callie K Partner: Miguel E Date Performed: March 20, 2012 TA: Raziyeh Y Abstract This lab had two purposes. The first was to determine the relationship between the length of a stretched wire and the frequencies at which resonance occurs. The second was to study the relationship between the frequency of vibration and the tension and linear mass density of the wire. In the first part we found the resonance, frequency and wavelength of a wire and used this data to calculate the speed of the traveling waves. For first harmonic, our wavelength was 1.200 m, found by the formula λ=2L/n. In the second part we used tension and velocity to find mass density. For the first notch, with a tension of 10.3 N, the velocity was 86 m/s with a overall mass density of 0.018. Discussion In the lab we wanted to find the frequency at which resonance occurs on a stretched wire as well as look at the relationship between the frequency of vibration and tension and linear mass density of the wire. For the first procedure, we increased the frequency until we found resonance, and recorded frequencies and nodes to calculate wavelength. We did this for first harmonic through fourth harmonic, and then found the velocities using our measurements. In the first harmonic phase, our signal generated frequency was 36±1 Hz, wire frequency was 72 Hz, the number of nodes was 2 and the wavelength was 1.200 m. This was found by using the equation λ=2L/n. For the second procedure, using a wire of a certain linear mass density we found the frequency of the wire as it oscillated in its fundamental mode, or lowest resonance mode, as we increased the tension by moving the hanging mass to a higher notch. We performed this procedure again using a wire with a different linear mass

More about Standing Waves Lab Report

Open Document