Question

How does the frequency of vibration of a small object floating in water compare to the number of waves passing it each second?

Answer 1

Linearly / proportionally

Explanation:

We can describe this very informally: If we have two waves passing by, the object will bounce twice as fast as if only one happened.

This is because the speed of the waves is always the same, so in order to have two waves pass in one second, they have to be half as wide as only one pass in a second.

We can do this more formally with the language of waves. The number of waves that pass per second is the frequency of the waves. We can easily see that the frequency of the waves is the same as the frequency of the bobbing of the object, since the object is carried with the waves.