Wave Basics Problem Set
Physics
Level 2.0
1. A train car is passing through and Hunter observes 6 trains go by every 12 seconds.
a. What is the frequency of train car?
b. What is the period of the train car?
2. The average wavelength in a series of ocean waves is 15.0 m. Two waves arrives every
10 seconds.
a. What is the frequency of the waves?
b. What is the velocity of the waves?
3. Taya’s guitar creates 200 sound waves over 2 seconds.
a. What is the frequency of the waves?
b. The sound waves have a distance between compressions that is 3.5 meters. What is
the speed of the sound waves?
4. A sound wave in the air has a frequency of 262 Hz and travels with a speed of 343 m/s.
How far apart are the wave compressions?
5. A sound that measures 71 dB is how much more energetic than one that measures 68 db?
6. The string on a piano vibrates with a frequency of 300 Hz. The sound waves produced by
the string have a wavelength in air of 1.2 meters. What is the speed of sound in that room?
7. At what decibel level will damage occur to your ears if you listen continuously for more
than 8 hours?
8. How long until damage happens if you are exposed to sounds at 95 db?
Level 3.0
9. Erika gets a slinky for her birthday (it’s what she always wanted). She and Silvia are
making waves on the slinky. On the video that they make they measure the distance between
compressions to be about 0.6 centimeters. They count 5 waves go by every 2 seconds.
a. What is the period of the waves?
b. What is the frequency of the waves
c. What is the speed of the waves on the slinky?
10. In a certain room sound waves have a speed of 340 m/s as they travel through air.
Tuning fork A creates waves with a wavelength of 1.5 meters. If tuning fork B creates waves
with twice the frequency of A, what is the wavelength of the waves created by tuning fork B?
11. How much more energetic is a sound that registers 85 dB compared to a 73 dB noise?
Level 4.0
12. P and S waves from an earthquake travel at different speeds and this difference helps in
locating the epicenter of the earthquake. Assume typical speeds of 8.5 km/s and 5.5 km/s for
P and S waves respectively. A particular seismic station detects the arrival of these two types
of waves at exactly 2.0 minutes apart. How far away from that seismic station did the
earthquake occur?