Lab Report: Various types of springs

Guiding Question: How does the material a spring is made of and size affect the way the wave moves?  Do longitudinal waves always travel the same way?  What affects the compressions and rarefactions most?  

Hypothesis: It will affect how large and long the compression will be inside the slinky when pulled on. We think that longitudinal waves do not travel the same way but will produce many different patterns. The thing that affects the compression and rarefaction is how much coils you pull back before you let it go and see the compression travel throughout the slinky

Variables:  

• Control:  length of the slinky (2 meters)
• Manipulated (What you will change): material and size of slinky
• Responding (What response you are looking for): How many compressions are made and how they react.

Materials:

• Slinkys (plastic and metal-34 coils)
• Meter stick.
• Camera (To film or take pictures of the compression inside the slinky)

Procedure:

1. stretch the metal slinky 1 meters
2. Gather 5 coils and release them.
3. Observe the number of compressions that it makes and how the energy moves through the slinky.
4.  Gather10 coils and release them.
5. Observe the number of compressions that it makes and how the energy moves through the slinky.
6. Gather 20 coils and release them.
7. Observe the number of compressions that it makes and how the energy moves through the slinky.
8. Enter all data into the table.




Data Table(s) (This is as far as you will get until you complete the table, but you MUST know what data you will collect BEFORE you begin)  

Table 1:  5 coils pulled back

Spring	Number of times the compression hits the ends and reflects back
	Flat surface
Metal spring	4 times
Plastic spring	3 times
metal and plastic combined	pull medal first:1 pull plastic first: 1 1/2

Table 2:  10 coils pulled back

Spring	Number of times the compression hits the ends and reflects back
	Flat surface
Metal spring	6 times
Plastic spring	3 times
metal and plastic combined	pull metal first: 1 times pull plastic first: 1 1/2

Table 3:  20 coils pulled back

Spring	Number of times the compression hits the ends and reflects back
	Flat surface
Metal spring	10 times
Plastic spring	5 times
metal and plastic combined	pull metal first:1 pull plastic first: 2

Data Analysis:
Matia:Chris and I observed really closely and what we noticed was that the metal slinky was more elastic, therefore had more compression to produce and it lasted longer. But then when we combined them together (metal and plastic) for the final test, the results turn out that the plastic had been better and that the compression bounced off more times then the metal one. I’m not sure why this is though.

Chris: I noticed that the metal slinky was much more reflective than the plastic slinky, but when we put them together the plastic slinky was better. There was a difference between plastic and metal slinky depending on which one we started with. If we started with the plastic slinky, the wave went all the way through, but when we started with the metal spring it did not work that well.   

Conclusion:
Chris: How does the material a spring is made of and size affect the way the wave moves? The metal slinky was much more elastic and made more compression to make it last longer than plastic slinky. The amplitude in the metal slinky had a bigger amplitude than the plastic slinky.  Yes they travelled the same way every time we did it. Every time the waves reached the end they reflected back and so on. Compression get affected by how many coils we are pulling back. The  rarefaction gets affected by how big the compression is.Our prediction was partially correct. We said that longitudinal waves would have different pattern, but I did not see anything different from test to test. The other predictions we had were right.
Matija: The material of the slinky affects the compression and the motion of the wave because some materials make the compression stop because they aren’t as elastic as others, so when the compression hits the sides it doesn’t really bounce off but lightly fades away. Yes the longitudinal waves only have one pattern which Chris and I noticed and that's having the compression go from left to right (or right to left) and then reflecting back. The thing that affected compression was the amount of coils we pulled back and then let go. And the bigger/longer the compression the more rarefaction is noticed. Our hypothesis was mostly correct with just a few erros such as the one that we said that we thought there would be more then one pattern in a longitude wave.
Further Inquiry:
Chris: It was a great experiment and the slinkys worked really well. The only thing that was a little annoying was when we put the metal and plastic slinky together, because they would not really hang on to each other.   
Matija: The whole experiment turned out to be great with only minor problems with clipping on the plastic and metal slinky together to see how long the compression would last. I have to say the results of that really stunned me i thought that it would have been more.

Tsunami Essay

To our knowledge Earth is the only inhabited place in the atmosphere but yet we choose to forget that fact when we destroy the nature around us. The man kind age became a factor to earth as technology developed and the industries placed around our earth caused severe consequences, as gases started to raise into our atmosphere forming global warming. Global warming did not only cause weather disturbances it also awakened many volcanoes and increased frequency occurrence of strong earthquakes, which then the earthquakes waves traveled into the ocean forming big waves called Tsunamis 

A tsunami is a larger, greater and stronger wave then a normal one and is considered one of the biggest natural disasters along with earthquake, which as i wrote above can sometimes be capable of forming tsunamis. They are destructive forces which occur because of: Global warming and the melting of an ice pack/glaciers. To form a picture in your mind just try to think of taking a rock and throwing it in a tub of water the water will rise and form a circle and expending it making it even bigger and bigger all the way until it no longer resembles a circle and the waves just travel across the water. It can also be formed by other natural disasters, because for a wave to form their needs to be a disturbance of some sort and many natural disasters make disturbances. Or it can form by the collision of tectonic plates which means that the seafloor changes in a way that one part of the sea floor goes over the other one making the water rise up high. This can also be caused by a landslide.

The affects of an tsunami depends on its strength and hight. The chances are that if there is an strong earthquake in a city thats close to the sea that the damage might be very big and sever such as the one that happened in Japan last year. If the earthquake or anything else that triggered the tsunami didn't have much power the wave as well wouldn't have much force to apply and its hight would be smaller. Some of the effects of a big tsunami are death (the most tragic one to me) destruction and damage, injuries, physiological problems for the region and the loss of money. And most of the time if the tsunami was strong enough to demolish objects such as building all that waist will be heading to the ocean when the water passes through the town. What people don't think about is how a tsunami isn't only dreadful when it strikes (thats the worst time because of the deaths and hunger) but its also dreadful for a many more years before the whole town, city or country is picked up again and recovers some of their buildings and materials.

In recant years by monitoring the activity under water we could see the patterns and predict any possible tsunami that are coming our way. By using this tool it increases our chance of surviving a tsunami by a lot. Sometimes the tsunami appears so suddenly that scientist can no see it therefore you still have chance to survive if your quick or notice some of the patterns the sea goes through before there is an tsunami. Of course not any piece of equipment made by men out there 100% reliable, they always have some sort of wholes in them. 

A warning system for tsunamis consists of two equally important components, one of which i mentioned above, which is actually looking at the radar and seeing if there is an tsunami. And the second is starting the alarm and evacuating people to safety. Now for the warning systom there are also two different kinds. The first one is International and the second regional. After that then the data observes the sea level hight seeing how fierce the tsunami is.

To conclude this essay u would just like to add that tsunamis are dangerous natural forces and have to be taken seriously if to big. Even with a warning system if your living by the water it wouldn't hurt once in a while to check up and see the situation.