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Strictly speaking, if you know certain properties of a wave, you can calculate its frequency, but usually a mechanism or a source of energy is what "determines" ("causes") a frequency. (Sorry to nit pick - I think I know what you're asking.)

The equation v = f*λ is true of all mechanical waves where v is the speed of wave propagation (that is, how fast a typical "crest," moves through space), f is the frequency (the number of complete cycles which occur in one second) and λ is the wavelength (how long, spatially, a complete wave cycle is).

Often you won't have access to these properties directly, but perhaps you are given the distance the wave travels in a certain time period (distance/time = average velocity = v) or the length of half a wavelength ( = 1/2 λ) or the period of the wave (defined as 1/f, a measure of the length of time for one cycle to occur).

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13y ago

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