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Standing Waves Lab Report

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Purpose: Find the vibration frequency of a string vibrator. Background: Waves are a fundamental part of everyday life. When a person speaks, moves, or breathes they emit sound waves into the air. When a person jumps in a pool, the impact of their body to the water creates waves in the water. For the purpose of this experiment, the type of wave that will be focused on is the standing wave. A standing wave is a wave that is visible to the eye, but it does not appear to be traveling (Giancoli, Physics 2015). These waves have two parts to them: nodes and antinodes. Nodes are the part of the standing wave were the string remains still (Giancoli, Physics 2015). Antinodes are the crests/troughs where the string is oscillating with maximum amplitude (Giancoli, Physics 2015). These nodes and antinodes are used to determine how many harmonics are in a standing wave. A harmonic is used to describe the number of loops or antinodes that appear in a standing wave (Giancoli, Physics 2015). For example, if there are three nodes and two antinodes, the wave is in the second harmonic. Examples of standing waves are in vibrating strings such as the …show more content…

3) Attach mass to the end of the string so that there is obvious tension in the string.
4) Place finger a desired length away from the vibrator and pinch the string to create a node.
5) Turn on the string vibrator and observe the number of nodes and antinodes to figure out which harmonic the wave is in.
6) Record results.

Data:
Measurements for Calculations
Lab Data

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