Waves: Sound, Light and Color

Portfolio Lists, Homework

Unit 1 : Introduction

Unit 2: Waves, Vocabulary List

Unit 3: Sound

Unit 4: Light


Useful Links

- The Amherst-Pelham Regional School District is not responsible for any content which is not hosted on our servers - 

Unit 1: Introduction

Hand Shadow show by Raymond Crowe: Amazing what a pair of hands and a light source can do!

Shadow Dancing by Pilobolus: A small sample of this dance troupe's excursion into the art of shadow.

Unit 2: Waves

Sine Waves and Simple Harmonic Motion

Acoustic and Vibration Animations:Dan Russel (Kettering U) has created some excellent animations of wave phenomena.

Wave on a String: Play with String. From U. of Colorado PhET collection.

Standing Wave on a String: See how a standing wave develops in real time.

Interference of Water Waves: From C.K. Ng's collection.

Ripple Tank Simulation: Paul Falstad's Java simulation.

Tsunami Explained: Nice animation from the BBC.

Tsunami: NOVA Website

Tsunami NOAA Site: click on "Tsunami in the sidebar, then on "Tsunami Science"

Tsunami Physics: U. of Washington general information: Click on "More on Tsunamis.

Unit 3: Sound

The Physics of Music and Musical Instruments: A downloadable PDF of this text.

Sound Simulations: Select "Sound and Waves." Then click on "Sound" to see a visualization of soundwaves. Click on "Fourier: Making Waves" to try your hand at matching complex wave patterns to their component frequencies.

Speed of Sound Calculator: Click on "Sound and Hearing" and then "Speed of Sound" at the bottom.

Standing Longitudinal Waves: Standing Waves in a Pipe

Air Columns in Musical Instruments: Check out open and closed pipes.

Beats: visualize the production of beats

Breaking the Sound Barrier: PBS show on the first plane to travel faster than the speed of sound.

Resonata: One of the many places where art and resonance merge.

The Human Ear: One of many sites that explains how we hear through our ears.

Test Your Hearing Frequency Response...

Try the Wave Game: Messing with Fourier Transforms

More about Musical Instruments, Reverberation etc.

Unit 4: Light and Color

Radio Wave Simulation: See how vibrating electric charge causes electromagnetic disturbances -- waves.

Infrared Space Telescope

Colored Shadows

Causes of Color: Gorgeous Museum Web Exhibit

Color Mixing: Additive and subtractive color mixing (lights and pigments) try it yourself!

Color Matters

Another Color Mixing

Laptop Screens: Did you know that laptop screens (and cell phone screens...) make use of polarized light, color mixing, and a whole lot more? 

Unit 5: Optics

Lens Simulator: Real and Virtual Images from the PhET collection.

Another Lens Simulator: Try the tutorial, or just mess around.

Ray Tracing for Spherical Mirrors

Funhouse Mirrors

Atmospheric Optics: There's a whole lot more than just rainbows!

Diffraction, Interference and Quantum Physics

Lasers: A good explanations of how they work, starting simple. Some very good animations.



© Dr. Patricia Blauner 2011