Frequency

Have you ever heard a bird chirping or the sound of a car honking? Those are sounds that you can hear because they happen at a certain frequency. But what is frequency?

Well, think of frequency as how often something happens. You might have heard people say "times per second" or "hertz", which means the same thing.

Let's say you are swinging on a swing. Every time you go back and forth, that is one swing cycle. If you can do that 2 times in a second, that means you are swinging at a frequency of 2 hertz.

Now, let's talk about sound. When someone speaks or a guitar plays, the movement of air creates soundwaves. The frequency of those soundwaves determines how high or low the pitch of the sound is. High pitch sounds, like a whistle or a bird singing, have a high frequency, which means they happen many times per second. Low pitch sounds, like a bass guitar or thunder, have a low frequency and happen fewer times per second.

Frequency is also important in other areas of life. For example, in electronics, the frequency of an alternating current determines how fast it changes direction. And in medicine, doctors use high-frequency sound waves to create images of the inside of the body in a process called an ultrasound.

So, frequency is how often something happens. It's important for things we can hear, like sound, and things we can't see, like electricity.