Author Note: So, here's is chapter 3! I've tried to work on the length, hope you enjoy. And review, please!
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"Once again."
"With feeling?" Summer glared at Freddy's joke. They really had no time for witticism that night: they had spent the previous two hours closed in the Jones' library studying waves, but Freddy still didn't seem to get it. Physics just wasn't his thing.
"Ok, ok, I know. No messing around, right?" He said, holding his hands up defensively. "But it doesn't make any sense to me. Why should I care about waves?"
"'Cause. You don't get to choose what topics to study, Freddy," Summer replied, annoyed. "So, what do you remember about waves?" She asked for the fifth time since they had started reviewing.
"They are energy?" Freddy asked tentatively and she nodded at him encouragingly. "And… there are two types, transversal and…And?"
"Longitudinal." She sighed.
"Right, longitudinal. Longitudinal," He repeated, trying to memorize. "Ah, the energy doesn't move but the particles do."
Summer leaned back in her chair and sighed again. "No." She was so exhausted she did not even have the strength to be irritated, resulting oddly patient. "It's the opposite. The particles stay still, but the energy moves. Waves are traveling energy, remember?"
"Hum, I guess so. But how can it travel without the particles? This stuff is just too abstract."
"I know." Summer agreed. He was actually right, physics often went unnoticed by the human eye. But to the human ear… "Sound!" She exclaimed, straightening on the armchair.
"What?" Freddy looked puzzled by her sudden burst of energy.
"Sound is a wave! Maybe that would make more sense for you. Get your drum set." She ordered, eager to find out whether her intuition was valid.
Freddy looked at her half skeptical and half amused. "I'm sorry?" He said with a smirk on his face.
"Oh, right." She rolled her eyes. "Let's go to the drum set," She corrected herself, looking at him for approval. As if it made any difference.
He chuckled at her expression and nodded. "Sure." He led the way to his room, where a polished black drum set was placed in its own corner. Freddy retrieved two drumsticks from the mess on one of the shelves and sat on the stool. "What shall I play?" He asked jokingly.
"A low pitched note."
He looked taken aback, not really expecting her to want him to play, but complied.
"Perfect. Listen, sound is a longitudinal wave," She started explaining, grabbing a chair and sitting next to him. "That means that when you hit one of the drums you create energy. The drum transfers that energy to a particle of air near it, and that particle pushes another particle, which pushes another one, which pushes another one and so on."
"Like a domino effect."
"Exactly!" She said, surprised that he finally understood. Had she known it was so easy, they wouldn't have wasted the whole evening reading the book and repeating. "Great! Now, remember the frequency?" she asked, leaning towards him a little as she got caught in the explanation.
"The number of waves in a sec?" He said uncertainly.
"Yeah, the number of waves that pass a given point in a second." Freddy stared at her with a smirk, the way he always did when she got too bookish. "Well," she continued. "That's the pitch. The higher the frequency-"
"The higher the note. I get it! That's not too hard." He said amazed.
She smiled at him, glad that they were finally making some progress. Freddy beamed back at her. "You should smile more often, Tink," He observed very simply, and she noted that it was her first smile that day.
She broke eye contact and tapped lightly on a cymbal, trying to regain concentration. "So, hem, frequency…It is given by the velocity of the wave, of which the formula is…" Freddy, next to her, was shaking his head lightly, a smirk on his face. "What?" She asked, turning toward him again.
"Afraid to lose too much time, Hathaway?" He asked. His voice sounded normal, but she knew that he only called her Hathaway out of bitterness.
"Freddy, you know that we need to stay on track." She said apologetically in a kind and warm voice. She gave him the tiniest of smiles.
"Yes, I know." He agreed. He couldn't resist the look in her brilliant dark eyes when she was trying to convince him. "So, velocity equals?"
Her smile grew the smallest bit. "Equals square root of tension over 'mu', which is a Greek letter. It is the symbol of mass over area. So if you want to know the velocity of the wave you create with a drum, you need to know the tension of the surface, its mass, which is basically its weight, and its area, how big it is."
"It doesn't sound that hard." He said, smiling.
Now it was Summer's turn to smirk knowingly. "Good, because now we need to solve some problems. You need to know how to apply the theory."
"Are you implying that I know the theory?" He asked, smirking as well.
"I told you, Freddy," She said teasingly, getting up and starting to head back to the library. "You are smarter than most people realize."
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