The sound experiment is the first major experiment in Conceptual Physics we’ve completed this year. The point of the experiment was to see if, in a group, we could clearly demonstrate sound in different situations, and conduct an experiment while using the Scientific Method. The Scientific Method is formulating a Research Question (what you want to test), Hypothesis (prediction to your question), the Procedure/Materials (a list of your process conducting the experiment), Data you obtained from the experiment, Conclusion (determine if you except or reject your hypothesis), and list your variables (things that you are testing or keeping the same.) My group was founded by all of us being handpicked by Mr. Bottelier. We then congregated and talked about what research question we wanted to choose based off the list Mr. Bottelier gave us. James, Cameron, and I all chose the research question: Echoes and Spaces where they can happen but with a twist. Instead of us testing different spaces, we tested how sound echoes off two specific surfaces and which surface produces the loudest echo. This then lead the group to developing a hypothesis. Based on our research on the two surfaces (plaster & a sound baffle wall) we decided that if we created a sound then the plaster wall will have the loudest echo (this statement is our hypothesis). Next step to complete, was to develop a procedure which clearly stated what steps we had to take to truly comprehend the experiment. Developing a procedure was a challenging task to complete. We had to put it in a step by step process and make the procedure clear; to wear a person that came of the street could decipher and follow the method.

 

      The biggest obstacle in our road to success was deciphering the data. My group used a microphone which recorded sound and expressed the sound intake in a line graph format. The only problem with the format was to understand the spike in the graph was either a reverberation or echo. Two artifacts that shows growth through this process is the first PowerPoint and the final one. The first one was full of uncompleted steps rather than the final Power Point, had descriptive data and listed most materials we used in our experiment. This is important to our experiment because as a group we wanted to know which surface could produce the loudest echo not reverberation. This extra information I’m about to share is for people who don’t know the difference between an echo and reverberation. A reverberation is a sound that is made that is not in a room/space that is measured in a least 17 meters. Rather an echo, is a sound that is reflected and you can hear the sound 0.1 seconds after the initial sound. Anyhow, we solved this problem by completing multiple trials. The repetitive trials are there to get the most accurate data out of our experiment. After we completed our method we created a material list.

 

       The material list was split into two drafts. The rough draft or first draft was written on a wrinkle up piece of paper and included materials that were obvious and that evolved little of thought. The finale draft was pretty clear and was thought out by all of my group members, rather than the first draft which was written by me alone. The list included these materials: laptop, microphone/sound sensor, software of the sound sensor, and etc. After the material list, we started to analyze our data. We did this by taking the numbers we needed from the sound sensor line graph and implanted them in an excel sheet format. The reason we put the data in the excel sheet it was to show what information we collected in our experiment in a clear format. Another example of how we made the data easy to decipher was by separating the data into five sections. The sections were named (going in this order): Trial Number/Surface, Clap volume, Background volume, Echo volume, and Difference. The reason why we added a section on background volume and difference is because the microphone/ sound sensor picks up all noise which then leads us to creating a difference section to subtract the background noise out of the echo volume.

 

      These sections distributed and represented the data in an accurate fashion. Finally, the last thing we did with the data was find the average of the sound baffle & plaster wall echo amplitude (measured in Decibels which is a unit measuring sound intensity), and subtracted the averages from each other to get the average difference. This lets the audience/crowd/students and etc. know how many Decibels (averagely) separated the two surfaces. Fun fact: the plaster wall had the loudest echo by an average of 4.52 dB compared to the sound baffle wall. In our conclusion, we accepted our hypothesis and inferred that the reason the plaster wall had a greater amplitude than the sound baffle wall is because the sound baffle wall had perforations; perforations are small holes in a surface. Perforations caused the waves to reflect/ echo in different directions which causes the amplitude to decreases. In conclusion some of the sources of errors in the experiment were: objects were in our testing area, background noise, clarity of our data, and etc.; we also listed some variables like: the type of surfaces, amplitude of the echo when reflected of the surfaces, distance away from the surfaces, and other variables that I did not mention.

 

      Out of the Five Qualities of DRSS, I mostly demonstrated Communication. Communication is the ability to express your opinions or ideas to a person(s) in a clear and understandable manner which I had to do when my group and I had to explain our Plaster wall vs. Sound baffle wall experiment through a Power Point to the rest of the class. I also demonstrated Communication, by talking and sharing my ideas about if we should test the voice intensities between females and males. If it wasn’t for communication as a group we wouldn’t be able to improve our first non-detailed PowerPoint into our final detailed PowerPoint. Communication also looked like me and my group talking about ideas to enhance our experiment. Communication was enhanced because now I can clearly explain my thought(s) in a concise manner. Without Communication our experiment would have been a failure.