A Level Physicists Complete Core Practicals

Published by Benenden School on Friday 28th of April 2023

Six One (Year 12) Physics students completed two more of their core practicals this week.

The students investigated the effects of tension, mass per unit length or length on the frequency of a standing wave, using vibration generators and looking for the first harmonic each time.

They also thought about how this physics is applied to stringed instruments and how their strings differ in pitch, how one string can make different notes and how they are tuned.

Finally, the students used diffraction gratings to calculate the wavelength of a laser. 

This involved creating diffraction patterns all over the walls of Physics Lab 3 and measuring the distances between the central and first and second order maxima before using trigonometry and equations to calculate a value for the wavelength, which they then compared to the true value.