Middle School Inquiry Lab on Properties of Waves
In this lab students will construct a simple model of a transverse wave. Students will also be able to measure the amplitude of the waves using a model they have constructed and compare that to the energy in the wave.
Each inquiry lab will contain an essential question that will drive the lesson and make students think. For this lesson, the essential question is:
- How does the amplitude of a wave show how much energy is in the wave?
BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND MATERIALS LIST:
Students will begin the lab by reading the essential question and background information. This can be done individually, as lab groups, or as a whole class. If you consider lab groups, you also might include some type of whole class formative checks before digging into the lab.
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Materials List:
- 8-10 m nylon rope
- masking tape
- dry erase markers
- digital camera
PROCEDURE:
For this lab, having students work in pairs or groups of three will probably be more successful than having them work independently. Marking a guide on the floor, using the masking tape and dry erase markers, students will have to take the nylon rope and create a wave pattern. At first, students will have to try to maintain an amplitude of .5 m. After a few practice pitches, once the student is able to create a successful wave pattern, another student will take pictures of the wave using some sort of digital camera.
Then the same student who created the first wave will try two more times, one at 1 m and the other at a height of their choosing. Following the same technique, practice and picture, the students will have to graph all three waves on their lab sheet. They will be required to label their graphs and use different colors to represent the different amplitudes.
CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING:
At this point in the lab, students will be checked for understanding by answering questions about their findings. Here is one that comes with the lab:
- What did you have to do differently to produce a wave with a larger amplitude?
CONCLUSION
Students will go back to the essential question and write a CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) to conclude the lab. Once completed, students will reflect back on their learning by answering the following questions:
- When you only changed your amplitude, how were your frequency and wavelength affected?
- Describe how you could make a transverse wave with low amplitude and low frequency.
- Describe how you could make a transverse wave with high amplitude and high frequency.
MODIFIED AND INDEPENDENT INQUIRY VERSIONS
All of the Kesler Science inquiry labs come with three different modification levels. Each lab is differentiated using the icons below.
STANDARDS ALIGNMENT
NGSS: MS-PS1-4 – Use mathematical representations to describe a simple model for waves that includes how the amplitude of a wave is related to the energy of the wave.
