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Unit 1:
Sound Wave Behavior
-Crash Landing Rescue Plan
Storyline:
After returning from a trip to the moon, your command module suffered damage upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. You are trapped floating in the ocean without radio connectivity and must use your knowledge of sound waves to plan a rescue.
Essential Question:
How do sound waves behave?
Student Take Aways:
Light and sound behave in measurable and predictable ways.
Big Ideas:
Sound, unlike light, needs a medium to travel.
Vocabulary Challenge
Anchor 1
Molecules and Mediums
A medium is any solid, liquid, or gas that a vibration
could pass through. Those states of matter all consist of the same thing...molecules. Trillions of them!
Since sound travels by vibrations, it needs a medium to travel through to pass along those vibrations.
When we talk, that medium is typically air molecules, but it can also travel through water or a solid. Since air molecules are further apart, it actually takes longer to transfer the vibrations than say in a solid or even a liquid.
vacuum
The Vacuum of Space
In space, the amount of molecules are so few and far apart that they are not able to pass along the vibrations of the sound waves.
They call it a vacuum because pretty much all matter has been pulled into a gravitational orbit like a star's or planet's atmosphere.
Thus, leaving very little left floating around in space
Wave Properties
Wave Prop
The rhythmic patterns of waves can be broken down in many ways. In this year we will focus on 3 types of waves. that are all modeled wonderful here at Science Primer
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