Re: Amplitude and pitch of sound waves

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>]

> The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) has more than 55,000
> members and now claims to have a network that reaches nearly
> half-a-million educators. It's motto is  "To promote excellence and
> innovation in science teaching and learning for all."   However it has
> just mailed packages of calendars for Y2000  to all of its members which
> contain serious errors in physics.
>
> On the calendar page for January 2000 there is the erroneous statement:
>
>        "Amplitude is the distance between the height of a crest
>        and the depth of a trough of a sound wave."

Have they any idea how opaque that statement is? "High" and "deep"
should not be used in a statement like this directed at naive
students. That error is much worse than any piddling factor of two
in my opinion.

> Also on the same calendar page is another incorrect  statement:
>
>        "Pitch is the frequency, or the number of cycles per
>        second, of a sound."

Well, it may be wrong, but it certainly is innovative.

Leigh