Mississippi Science PHY.4.2
The Standard
- PHY.4
- Students will investigate and explore wave properties.
Describe and model through digital or physical means the characteristics and properties of mechanical waves by simulating and investigating properties of simple harmonic motion.
2026 Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Science · Waves
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students make a spring or slinky oscillate and measure its amplitude and period. They model how a wave moves through a material while each part moves around its resting position. They identify wavelength and frequency in their model.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can mark one coil on a slinky and show how the coil moves as a crest passes it. Given a wave sketch and a graph of one point’s motion, they can find amplitude, wavelength, and period, then calculate frequency.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think the coils travel down the slinky with the crest. They may confuse amplitude with wavelength, or period, which is a time, with the distance between crests.
How to Assess It
- Draw a wave with crests 8 cm apart and an amplitude of 2 cm, and say a marked point completes one cycle in 0.5 s. Ask students to label wavelength and amplitude, find the frequency, and sketch the marked point’s motion over one cycle.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Stretch a slinky, tape one coil, move one end steadily, and time ten cycles while watching the marked coil.
Ask students to explain on paper why a crest moves down a slinky while a taped coil stays near its starting point.
Run a card match with wave sketches and point-motion graphs labeled with amplitude and period; students pair matching cards.
Touch a vibrating tuning fork to a shallow tray of water, and have students sketch the fork’s motion and the outward-moving ripples.
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Printable PHY.4.2 Worksheet
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Related Standards
- PHS.6.1
Use models to analyze and describe examples of mechanical waves’ properties (e.g., wavelength, frequency, speed, amplitude, rarefaction, and compression).
- PHY.4.3
Use mathematical and computational analysis to explore wave characteristics (e.g., velocity, period, frequency, amplitude, phase, and wavelength).
- PHY.4.5
Design, investigate, and collect data on standing waves and waves in specific media (e.g., stretched string, water surface, and air) using online simulations, p...
- PHY.4.1
Analyze the characteristics and properties of simple harmonic motions, sound, and light.
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