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Re: Amplitude and pitch of sound waves



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