Kinesthetic Transverse Wave Demonstration

This is a variation on the String and Sticky Tape demonstration “The Wave Game,” suggested by Ron Edge.¹ A group of students stand side by side, each one holding a card chest high with both hands. The teacher cues the first student to begin raising and lowering his card. When he starts lowering his card, the next student begins to raise his. As succeeding students move their cards up and down, a wave such as that shown in the figure is produced. To facilitate the process, students' motions were synchronized with the ticks of a metronome (without such synchronization it was nearly impossible to generate a satisfactory wave). Our waves typically had a frequency of about 1 Hz and a wavelength of around 3 m. We videotaped the activity so that the students could analyze the motions. The (17-year-old) students had not received any prior instruction regarding wave motion and did not know beforehand the nature of the exercise they were about to carry out. During the activity they were asked what a transverse wave is. Most of them quickly realized, without teacher input, that while the wave propagated horizontally, the only motion of the transmitting medium (them) was vertical. They located the equilibrium points of the oscillations, the crests and troughs of the waves, and identified the wavelength. The teacher defined for them the period of the oscillations of the motion of a card to be the total time for one cycle. The students measured this time and then several asserted that it was the same as the wave period. Knowing the length of the waves and the number of waves per second, the next step can easily be to find the wave speed.