# Period and frequency relationship

### What is the relationship between frequency and period? - The Handy Physics Answer Book

The time period is reciprocal of the frequency which means both the quantities are inversely proportional to each other. In equation form, period. To answer the question "same wavelength, different frequencies, which arrives first?": naturally, the one with biggest speed, which is. Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency, which emphasizes the contrast to spatial frequency and angular frequency. The period is the duration of time of one cycle in a repeating event, so the Diagram of the relationship between the different types of frequency and.

Difference between Period and Frequency Definition of Period and Frequency Both the terms period and frequency are related because they exhibit a certain pattern of movement, yet they are distinctly different.

Both are related to periodic phenomenon and are often confused with each other. Period refers to the amount of time it takes a wave to complete one full cycle of oscillation or vibration. Frequency, on the contrary, refers to the number of complete cycles or oscillations occur per second. Period is a quantity related to time, whereas frequency is related to rate. Period simply refers to the time for something to occur periodically, whereas frequency means how often that happens.

Relationship of Period and Frequency Both the quantities are inversely proportional to each other. The frequency is expressed in cycles per second, waver per second, vibrations per second, etc.

The period is expressed in seconds per cycle. In mathematical terms, both the quantities are reciprocal of each other.

In equation form, frequency and period are expressed as: It can also be expressed as: The frequency and period are inversely proportional to each other. Because only one cycle occurs in a second, frequency of the wave would be 1 cycle per second. And if the wave took half a second to oscillate the complete cycle, the period of that wave would be 0.

Do you observe the relationship? Mathematically, the period is the reciprocal of the frequency and vice versa. In equation form, this is expressed as follows. Since the symbol f is used for frequency and the symbol T is used for period, these equations are also expressed as: The quantity frequency is also confused with the quantity speed.

## Difference Between Period and Frequency

The speed of an object refers to how fast an object is moving and is usually expressed as the distance traveled per time of travel. For a wave, the speed is the distance traveled by a given point on the wave such as a crest in a given period of time. So while wave frequency refers to the number of cycles occurring per second, wave speed refers to the meters traveled per second.

A wave can vibrate back and forth very frequently, yet have a small speed; and a wave can vibrate back and forth with a low frequency, yet have a high speed.

### Frequency and Period of a Wave

Frequency and speed are distinctly different quantities. Wave speed will be discussed in more detail later in this lesson. How do changes in the frequency of a wave affect the wavelength of a wave? Use the Wave plotter widget below to find out.

Alter the frequency and observe how the pattern changes. We Would Like to Suggest The strobe light is pointed at the rotating object and the frequency adjusted up and down. When the frequency of the strobe equals the frequency of the rotating or vibrating object, the object completes one cycle of oscillation and returns to its original position between the flashes of light, so when illuminated by the strobe the object appears stationary.

Then the frequency can be read from the calibrated readout on the stroboscope. A downside of this method is that an object rotating at an integral multiple of the strobing frequency will also appear stationary. Frequency counter Modern frequency counter Higher frequencies are usually measured with a frequency counter.

This is an electronic instrument which measures the frequency of an applied repetitive electronic signal and displays the result in hertz on a digital display. It uses digital logic to count the number of cycles during a time interval established by a precision quartz time base.