Physics – Tuckey Name:

Sound Quiz / 30 Sua Natura Infinita Est?

PART I – You may use any notes you have already printed out.

Select the one response that best completes the statement or answers the question and circle it.
1. A person standing in the ocean notices that after a wave crest passes by, ten more crests pass in a time of 120
seconds. What is the frequency of the wave?
(a) 0.08 Hz (b) 0.08 seconds
(c) 12 s (d) 12 Hz

2. A wave has a frequency of 45 Hz and a speed of 22 m/s. Which of the following can you calculate?
(a) wavelength (b) amplitude
(c) both wavelength and amplitude (d) neither wavelength nor amplitude

3. A sound wave is carried the same distance by two distinct media. Which wave arrives sooner?
(a) The wave in the more dense material. (b) The wave in the less dense material.
(c) They arrive at the same time. (d) Sound only travels through air.

4. The source of a sound, and the observer of a sound are in relative motion towards each other. How does the
frequency that the observer hears compare to that which is actually produced by the source?
(a) It is higher. (b) It is lower.
(c) It is the same. (d) There is not enough information to say.

5. How does the wave speed of a 440-Hz pure tone compare to that of a 220-Hz pure tone traveling in air?
(a) 2 times as fast (b) ½ as fast
(c) The same (d) Not enough information to say

6. A tuning fork vibrates at a frequency of 524 Hz. An out-of-tune piano string vibrates at 529 Hz. How much
time separates the beats created by playing both notes together?
(a) 0.2 seconds (b) 524 seconds
(c) 5 seconds (d) Not enough information to say

7. The range of human hearing is closest to:

(a) 1 to 100 kHz (b) 20 Hz to 20 kHz
(c) 1,000 to 100,000 Hz (d) Human hearing is too varied to say

8. A person describes a sound as being “loud”. What factors contribute to this determination?
(a) amplitude of the sound (b) frequency of the sound
(c) sensitivity of the ear (d) all of the above

PART II – You may use any notes you have already printed out to complete this portion of the quiz. For
each of the following, circle the answers on this sheet, and attach any additional work on separate sheets.
Be sure to show all work, and include proper units in your answers. No supporting work = No credit.

1. A rhinoceros is calling her mate using infrasonic sound with a frequency of 5.0 Hz. Her mate is 480 m away.
The speed of the sound is 343 m/s. How many cycles of the sound wave are between the two animals?
2. A train is blowing its whistle while traveling at a speed of 33.0 m/s. The speed of sound is taken to be 343
m/s. Observer A is directly in front of the train, while observer B is directly behind it. Find the ratio of the
whistle frequency heard by A to that heard by B.

3. Two guitars are slightly out of tune. When they play the same note simultaneously, the sounds they produce
have wavelengths of 0.776 m and 0.769 m. On a day when the speed of sound is 343 m/s, what beat
frequency is heard?

4. The following drawing shows a string on which two rectangular pulses are traveling at a constant speed of 1
cm/s at time t = 0. Using the principle of linear superposition, draw the shape of the string at t = 1 s, 2 s, 3 s,
and 4 s. (This may well require four additional pictures drawn.)

5. The G-string on a guitar has a fundamental frequency of 196 Hz and a length of 0.62 m. This string is pressed
against the proper fret to produce the note C, whose fundamental frequency is 262 Hz. What is the distance
between the fret and the end of the string at the bridge (on the body) of the guitar?