Tuning Fork Lab

TUNING FORK LAB

Guiding Question: How does density of various solids affect the way the sound waves travel from the tuning fork?

Hypothesis: If the material is denser, then the sound from the tuning fork will travel faster (higher frequency) and it will be much louder.

Materials:
1. Tuning fork (the main resource)
2. White board (plastic)

3. Table (wood)
4. Locker (metal)

5. Piece of Paper (paper material)

6. Rock material
7. Watch stop

8. Computer (for putting and processing the data)

Procedure:
1. Take a pencil and a notebook before you get started with your experiment, because you wouldn’t want to miss something out!
2. Draw a table in your notebook with all necessary columns and rows (this table should contain the type of material, its density, time of vibrations and observations, and all that for different types of material)

3. Take a tuning fork of normal size and hit it on chosen material. You should feel the vibration of the tuning fork while you’re holding it.
4. Get a timer/watch stop and time how long the tuning fork vibrates.

5. Record your observations in the table in the notebook.
6. Repeat the steps 3-5 as many times as you have materials.

Record and Analysis:

The measurements with the observations are given in the table below.

Material	Density, kg/m3	Time, seconds	Observation
Metal (Locker)	7400-8000	About 25	Soft vibration, long lasting
Plastic (White Board)	900-1100	About 19	Loud but slow
Wood (Table)	700-850	16	Quiet and slow
Rock	2000	About 22	Vibrates slowly but is loud.
Paper	21450	12	Low pitched

Conclusion:
Jovana’s conclusion:
In conclusion, I can say that Ergi and my hypothesis was partially wrong because the vibrations for the denser materials were long lasting, but soft, so I can’t really say it was faster, as I suppose. The pitch was lower for denser materials, but the sound was much louder. This means that only part of our hypothesis was true.

Ergi’s Conclusion:
In conclusion, our hypothesize was right. If the material is denser the tuning fork will be slower. On the table above hard materials all ways lasts longer and has a heavier sound than the others.

Further Inquiry
Jovana’s Further Inquiry:

In the future, we can improve our experiment by doing at least three trials with each type of material and recording each time of vibrations as well as observations during these vibrations. We could also use different types of tuning forks and compare them. And, to conclude, I’m not sure if the densities for the materials are exact because I took them from the internet, but, there are different types of plastic or metal etc.

Ergi’s Further Inquiry:
An interesting thing I learned was that on wood it makes a very long vibration and it lasts for a long time. But, the song is not that high.