The Premise
I wanted to provide students with some sort of hands on demonstration that helps them visualize and remember this relationship rather than just memorize that sound travels faster through steel than water. In this model, dominos are used to represent the spacing between molecules in a substance propagating a sound wave. Setting up the Dominos
Capturing the ResultIt all happens really fast and it's really hard to tell "who won" in real time. Because of this, I have students capture this in slow-mo on their phones or tablets and watch back the footage. Things to Keep in Mind:
Is this Model Perfect?No. As with almost every physical model representing a hard to visualize phenomenon, this model has more than it's fair share of limitations. I would argue however that at the high school level being able to relatively rank the speed of sound through a typical solid, liquid, and gas is about as much as students really need. To that end, I think this domino wave model provides a really nice experience for students to hook on to and remember. SimulationThere was a simulation of this concept posted on reddit (thanks to @UniverseAndMore for spotting it). It does a nice job of making this difference between solid/liquid/gas even clearer. This post is part of larger collection of my favorite science demonstrations CLICK HERE FOR MORE DEMOSRelated Lessons
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Joe CossetteFather, Physics Teacher, Knowles Fellow, Friend, Techie, and Musician Blog Posts |