John+K14

=DETERMINING THE BEST TYPE OF ANTENNA TO USE FOR A RADIO TUNING INTO AM RADIO STATIONS =

John K. 2013-2014

=ABSTRACT = The purpose of the first experiment that was performed was to find out the best type of wire to use for an AM radio’s antenna. The hypothesis was that the default antenna would be the best type of antenna, because it is the main antenna that comes with the radio and it must be there for a reason. To perform the experiment, an antenna was attached to the radio, and the noise level of the sound was recorded. The results of the experiment found out that the best type of antenna is an 8-gauge copper non-insulated wire. It came in with -3.9 dB of sound. The second best antenna was the normal antenna, followed by a galvanized steel wire. The worst type of antenna was a 16-gauge insulated bundled copper wire. The purpose of the extension experiment was to find out the best height of a person for an antenna. The result was that the higher the person, the better the reception.

=EXPERIMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS AND FUTURE EXPERIMENTS = The experiment could have been improved by taking the default antenna off the radio when it was not being tested, instead of retracting it into the radio. A future experiment would be to test if antennas that had electric current flowing through them worked better than antennas that did not have electrical currents flowing through them.  To read the complete ISP Paper for this experiment, click on the PDF file link below