Lesson Summary

In this activity, students learn how mechanical waves are helping to made advances in medicine. Students will apply their knowledge of mechanics to understanding a new technique and even to make disease diagnoses.

Upon completion of this lesson, students will be able to:

• explain the relationship between a mechanical wave’s speed and the medium through which it is traveling.
• calculate a wave’s speed given frequency and wavelength.
• describe medical applications of mechanical waves.

Standards

Science and Engineering Practices:

MA Science and Technology/Engineering (2016):

NGSS (2013):

Common Core Math/Language Arts Standards:

Tags

Educator SoundBites

"I used this lesson in my Earth and Space Science course to prepare my students for a more complex discussion of seismic waves and our discovery of the structure of the Earth. This provided a great scaffold for our material, and the kids absolutely loved learning about medicine in a physical science course! The questions in the student handout were an appropriate level for my class, and are up to our high AVID standard for classroom questioning."
– Rachel Smith, Lubbock Coronado High School in Lubbock, TX