Tuning Forks Lab Report

The concept of resonance was the broad general idea that enlightened this particular lab. A natural vibrating frequency occurs when a tuning fork vibrates after a student struck the tuning fork. When a tuning fork is struck and placed near the column of air, it creates a standing wave. A resonance is created when the frequencies of tuning fork and the column of air are equal to each other. For the resonance to occur, the distance between the top of the tube and the water must be either ¼ of the wavelength or a multiple of ¼ of the wavelength. The objective of this lab was to investigate the resonances of tuning forks with various natural vibrating frequency. The student would also evaluate the speed of sound in air with the resonances. There
The room temperature during part 1 was 23°C. For trial 1, the speed of sound was 351.744m/s and tuning fork with frequency of 384Hz was used. The data had percent error of 2.73 percent. For trial 2, the speed of sound was 346.112m/s and tuning fork with frequency of 512Hz was used. The data had percent error of 1.08 percent. For trial 3, the speed of sound was 347.52m/s and tuning fork with frequency of 480Hz was used. The data had percent error of 1.5 percent. For part 2, tuning fork with 426.7Hz was used for trial 1, and tuning fork with 320 HZ was used for trial 2. In trial 1, the speed of sound was 344.77m/s. The calculated temperature was 22.95 °C. When the actual temperature was measured, it was 22°C. The speed of sound was 344.03m/s for trial 2. The calculated temperature was 21.7°C, and an actual temperature was 22°C. The percent error for trial 1 in day 2 was 4.31 percent, and it was 1.29 percent for trial 2 in day 2. Most scientific data is considered accurate and well experimented when the percent error is less than five percent. In this lab, the percent error for all the trials were less than five percent, which gave the most accurate