Thinking about actions to take: Quantifying and Using Sound

There's a good chance you could improve your teaching if you were to:

Try these

• showing large-scale, slow vibrations producing a sound
• emphasising that all sounds have a source
• tracing the chain from source to detector, via medium, often
• showing changing frequency without changing amplitude
• showing changing amplitude without changing frequency
• measuring frequency directly, linking this to counting the vibrations
• relating delays in hearing sounds to trip times due to the speed of propagation

Teacher Tip: Work through the Physics Narrative to find these lines of thinking worked out and then look in the Teaching Approaches for some examples of activities.

Avoid these

• showing waveforms on an oscilloscope
• introducing wavelength prematurely
• using a strobe without explaining how you see what you see

Teacher Tip: These difficulties are distilled from: the research findings; the practice of well-connected teachers with expertise; issues intrinsic to representing the physics well.