Name: _________________________________________ Date: _______________ Period: ____________
Unit 15/Chapter 10 Study Guide
1. Label the diagrams.
2. What determines the speed of a wave? ________________________________________________________
3. When objects vibrate at their natural frequency, it is called ________________________________.
4. In a ________________________________ wave, the medium and wave are in the same direction; in a
___________________________________ wave, the medium and wave are at right angles.
5. What happens when a wave when it changes mediums? ___________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
6. Amplitude indicates how much _______________ a wave has.
7. What allows you to see objects? __________________________________________________
8. What kinds of waves can be reflected? __________________________________________
9. Where does light travel fastest? ________________________________________
10. Where does sound travel fastest? ________________________________________________
11. How do you make a sound wave travel faster? _________________________________________________
12. When you squeeze the coils of a spring and release them, you create a ______________________________
wave.
13. Standing waves are created by two waves that are equal in _________________________ and
_______________________________, but opposite in ___________________________________.
14. If you decrease the frequency of a wave, what happens to the wavelength? ___________________________
15. If you increase the frequency of a wave, what happens to the wavelength? ___________________________
16. How can you tell a high amplitude compressional wave from a low amplitude compressional wave?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
17. A wave travelling on a string has a wavelength of 0.10 m and a frequency of 7 Hz. Calculate the speed of
the wave.
18. A sound wave travelling in water at 1440 m/s has a wavelength of 0.5 m. Determine the frequency of the
wave.
19. An electromagnetic wave moving through free space at 300,000,000 m/s has a frequency of
462,000,000,000,000 Hz. Find the wavelength of this wave.
Answers
1. Transverse wave (across the top): crest, amplitude, wavelength; (across the bottom): trough, rest point,
wavelength, amplitude; Compressional wave (across the top): wavelength; (across the bottom): rarefaction,
compression
2. the medium it is traveling through
3. resonance
4. compressional; transverse
5. it changes speed, which causes refraction
6. energy
7. reflection of light
8. all kinds
9. through space
10. solids
11. increases the temperature of the medium (heat the medium)
12. compressional
13. wavelength; amplitude; direction
14. increases
15. decreases
16. Higher amplitude waves have tighter or more dense compressions and looser, less dense rarefactions than
low amplitude waves.
17.
Unknown: speed
v = fλ
Givens:
v = (7)(0.10) = 0.70 m/s
f = 7 Hz
λ = 0.10 m
18.
Unknown: frequency
f=v/λ
Givens:
f = (1440)/(0.5) = 2880 Hz
v = 1440 m/s
λ = 0.5 m
19.
Unknown: wavelength
Givens:
f = 4.62 × 1014 Hz
v = 3.0 × 108 m/s
λ = v/f
λ = (3.0 × 108)/(4.62 × 1014) =6.49 × 10-7 m
or 0.000 000 649 m