RipStik Sine Wave

Physical science chapter nine wave forms began with a RipStik run as in prior terms. Again this term, as I did last term, I did not walk down to A101. I opted to again use the covered walkway on the east side of the library. The poster pad was still in my office from the ethnobotany gymnosperm presentations, so I opted to run the swizzle first.

This term I used a tape measure in lieu of meter sticks. Due to wind, all edges had to be fully taped down. A bar of soap is holding down the one corner.

The tape measure proved a handy adaptation.

A practice run. Westbound, uphill, works better than downhill, but a steeper slope might help. Having four waves on the paper, rather than two and change, would be better I suspect. I have used the steeper slope, but that location is also closer to the B building. I remain concerned about noise spill over.

My wave form was not as stable as I might have liked, and I crossed the paper faster than I had wanted to. Hard to have both a stable wave form and a relatively high frequency. I get the highest frequencies at the lowest speeds, speeds at which stability can be problematic.

This term I remained at the sidewalk, the rest of the class eventually drifting out to find me.

The poster paper was my white board.

Class in session.

I did momentarily confuse myself. I meant to calculate the period but then wrote the 2.5 periods in the numerator and 1.06 seconds in the denominator. This calculates the frequency, not the period. I then corrected this on the sheet.

I had almost forgotten to cover the amplitude. The amplitude was tagged onto the end of the presentation after I had covered the wave velocity calculation.

Soap bars were used initially to hold down the paper until taping was finished.