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Home Concept Builders Vibrations and Waves Frequency and Period Help Help 11

Frequency and Period - Questions 11 Help

Vibrating objects undergo back-and-forth vibrations about a fixed location. Two physical quantities that describe these vibrations are frequency and period. While related, they have quite different definitions, meanings, and mathematics.

There are two similar versions of this question. Here is one of those versions:
 

Version 1:

Anna Litical and Noah Formula are conducting an experiment with a Slinky. They are making measurements and determining the frequency and period. Consider two of the cases below. In which case did they vibrate the Slinky with the greatest frequency?
 

The frequency of a vibrating object refers to how often the object undergoes a complete back and forth cycle about its customary resting position. To calculate such a quantity, one would need to count the number of complete vibrational cycles in a given amount of time and divide the number of cycles by the amount of time. As such, the unit of frequency is cycles per second. This is sometimes equated with the unit Hertz and abbreviated as Hz.

The data table shows 10 vibrations as the number of cylces. This occurs in different amounts of time. Since the frequency will be 10 cycles divided by the time, the greatest frequency will correspond to the case with the least amoun of time.

Try this link to The Physics Classroom Tutorial for more help with the concepts of frequency and period:

Frequency and Period

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