PhysicsLAB Practice Problems
Wave Fundamentals


Directions: On this worksheet, you will deal with the fundamental definitions of waves.
Question 1  A sound wave has a frequency of 307 Hz and travels in air at a speed of 342.4 m/sec. How far apart are any two adjacent wave compressions?
Question 2  A fisherman notices that wave crests pass the bow of his anchored boat every 3 seconds. He measures the distance between two wave crests to be 6.2 meters. How fast are the waves traveling?
Question 3  A wave has a speed of 190 m/sec and a wavelength of 6.2 meters. What is this wave's period?
Question 4  A sinusoidal wave travels along a string. The time for a particular point to move from maximum displacement to zero is 0.19 seconds. What is the wave's frequency?
Question 5  If the wavelength is 1.535 meters in Question 4, that how fast does the wave energy travel along the string?
Question 6  Light has a speed in a vacuum of 3 x 108 m/s. The frequency of visible light is about 6.1 x 1014 Hz. What is the approximate wavelength of the light?


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