Literature in Physics Education has shown that students encounter many difficulties in understanding
wave propagation. Such difficulties lead to misconceptions also in understanding sound, often used
as context to teach wave propagation. To address these issues, we present in this paper a module in
which the students are engaged in computer-based activities dealing with sounds produced by a tuning
fork and the Sun. The main reason underlying such choice is to show how the same measurement
technique (spectral analysis) can be used to obtain information about very different phenomena. The
activities build on a formal analogy to determine the fundamental frequency of sounds emitted by the
two sources (tuning fork and Sun). Using a digital audio editor, the sounds are analyzed using three
types of graphs: intensity versus time (waveform), intensity versus frequency (spectrum), and
frequency versus time (spectrogram). The aim of the activities is to address students’ alternativ…