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Ljubljana, Slovenia
GIREP Seminar
2003
On earlier stage, it is important to integrate science disciplines, especially to connect physics with biology which is much more popular with teachers and pupils. A topic which integrates physics and biology is communication through waves. To survive, living beings need informations about their surroundings, and they need to communicate with each other. Most common means of information transfer in nature are light and sound.
In this context, we start with waves on water, on string and spring to introduce elementary physics concepts such as frequency, wavelenghth, energy of waves. Next we talk about sound which is the most important means of communication exchange between animals and human beings: they generate and receive sound, and since they modulate it, they can express with it very complicated messages. We can ilustrate this with interesting examples out of animal world. Then we discuss light as a means of acquiring information about the surroundings, but also as a means of information exchange between some animals who live in the dark.