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Sound & Matter K-12 Experiments & Background Information for Lesson Plans & Science Fair Projects

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Sound & Matter K-12 Experiments & Background Information for Lesson Plans & Science Fair Projects

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Sound & Matter K-12 Experiments & Background Information for Lesson Plans & Science Fair Projects

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Sound & matter K-12 experiments & background unformation for Lesson Plans, class activities & science fair projects for elementary school students

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Sound waves are mechanical waves

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Matariki Week making and using a purerehua - YouTube

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Matariki Week making and using a purerehua - YouTube

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Matariki Week making and using a purerehua

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Uploaded by GeorgeT Te Tai on 2013-06-26.

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Tiki Taane 'Tangaroa' at the VNZMAs 2008 - YouTube

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Tiki Taane 'Tangaroa' at the VNZMAs 2008 - YouTube

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Tiki Taane 'Tangaroa' at the VNZMAs 2008

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Tiki Taane performs Tangaroa at the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards 2008.

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SOUND What Produces Sound? Vibration, Pitch and Length of a String Vibration, Pitch and Thickness of a String Vibration, Pitch and Tautness of a String Vibration of Glass and Pitch - A Water Xylophone Vibration of Air and Pitch Rate of Vibration and Pitch (Piano) How Sound Waves Move (Water) How Sound Waves Move (Slinky) Echoes Speed of Sound Sounds on a String - The Chiming Fork Sounds on a String - Tin Can Telephone "Is That Me?"

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Beatbox brilliance | Tom Thum | TEDxSydney

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Why are some sounds high and some sounds low?

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Why are some sounds high and some sounds low?

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Why are some sounds high and some sounds low?

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In this Mystery, students discover that sound is a wave. In the activity students model the relationship between a sound's wavelength and its pitch.

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Ask the students the questions in bold and facilitate an open ended discussion. Possible answers are shown in italics.
What did you feel when you touched the tuning fork after you hit it? What did you observe happening to the water? What happened when you touched the ping-pong ball with the tuning fork the first time? What happened to the ping-pong ball when you touched it the first time after hitting the tuning fork on a book? What happened when you touched it a second time? Did anything surprise you when the tuning fork touched the ping-pong ball? Why do you think the ping-pong ball moved? What else did you notice (observe) with your eyes or ears? Can we see sound move?
The sound made by the tuning fork made a pattern of waves that showed in the water. If we could see the air around us, we would be able to see the same kind of waves as sound moves through the air from a radio to your ears.
Can sound move things?
Energy (vibration) is transferred from the tuning fork to the ping-pong ball. The amount of energy transferred will determine how far the ping-pong ball moves.

This sound movement is felt by special parts of your ear (tiny hair cells of the inner ear). Deep inside your ear, sound waves actually move small vibration sensors called hair bundles. These parts of your ear are much smaller than grains of sand. If sound is strong (loud) enough, the sound waves cause some of them to bend or break. When you are around loud sounds often, or for a long time, you may begin to have trouble hearing.
Do you know anyone who seems to have trouble hearing some sounds? Give examples of some loud sounds you are exposed to in your environment.
Note: Loud sounds are not the only cause of hearing loss, but it is the most common cause in America (and in other industrialized nations). Loud sounds (above 85 dB for 8 hours or more) can hurt your ears by damaging the sensitive hair cells of the inner ear. It makes no difference whether you like the loud sounds or not - if they are 85 dB and over, they can begin to damage hair cells in your inner ear.

Doctors cannot fix ears that have been damaged by loud sound so it is very important to protect your ears.

Here is what you can do:

Turn it down (turn the volume down)

Walk away (get far away from the loud sound)

Wear ear muffs or ear plugs

QUESTIONS TO TELL IF YOU ARE AROUND SOUND THAT MAY HARM YOUR HEARING:

□ Do you often have to shout for people to hear you?

□ After being around loud sound, did you ever have a ringing or other noises in your ears or head (tinnitus)?

□ Does music sound a little strange after you listen for a while?

□ After being near loud sound, does it sound like people are talking to you through a pillow or underwater?

□ After being near loud sound, do your ears sometimes feel "full" or "stopped up"?

□ When you are listening to stereo headphones does the person next to you need to raise their voice for you to understand what they are saying?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, you may have been exposed to damaging sound levels.

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Ask the students the questions in bold and facilitate an open ended discussion. Possible answers are shown in italics. What did you feel when you touched the tuning fork after you hit it? What did you observe happening to the water? What happened when you touched the ping-pong ball with the tuning fork the first time?

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BBC - KS2 Bitesize Science - Sound : Play

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BBC - KS2 Bitesize Science - Sound : Play

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BBC - KS2 Bitesize Science - Sound : Play

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Science physical processes exercise - Sounds activity

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Sound Uncovered: An Interactive Book for the iPad - Exploratorium | Exploratorium

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Sound Uncovered: An Interactive Book for the iPad - Exploratorium | Exploratorium

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Explore the surprising side of sound with Sound Uncovered, an award-winning interactive collection from the Exploratorium featuring auditory illusions, acoustic phenomena, and other things that go bump, beep, boom, and vroom.

Hear with your eyes, see with your ears, test your hearing, make and modify recordings-this app puts you at the center of the experiment.

Why do some noises seem louder at night? Are there secret messages in music played backward? How can Siri understand different accents? Why does the sound of gum chewing drive some people mad? Listen up and find answers to these questions and more as you take an auditory trip to the place where sound gets truly interesting: the space between your ears.
And it's free! Download it at the iTunes App Store.
Sound Uncovered won the Jackson Hole Science Media Symposium's 2014 Best Online and Interactive Media Award; the American Association of Museum's 2013 Silver MUSE award, Mobile Applications; and Museum and the Web's 2013 Best of the Web Award, Mobile. It has been featured as Editor's Pick and New and Noteworthy by Apple, ranked #5 in Education among free iPad apps, and was chosen as App of the Day/Week by several media outlets including Gizmodo, The Guardian, Mashable, and Appolicious.

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Sound Uncovered: An Interactive Book for the iPad - Exploratorium | Exploratorium

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Explore the surprising side of sound with Sound Uncovered, an award-winning interactive collection from the Exploratorium featuring auditory illusions, acoustic phenomena, and other things that go bump, beep, boom, and vroom. Hear with your eyes, see with your ears, test your hearing, make and modify recordings-this app puts you at the center of the experiment.

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Modelling waves with slinkies | Sciencelearn Hub

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Modelling waves with slinkies | Sciencelearn Hub

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In this activity, students model how sound travels by sending waves along two stretched plastic slinkies tied together.

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(1) 1000+ images about 6: Physics - Sound on Pinterest

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(1) 1000+ images about 6: Physics - Sound on Pinterest

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Find and save recipes, parenting hacks, style inspiration and many other ideas to try.

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We support NZ schools by providing school library, reading, and digital literacy advice; online teaching and learning resources; and professional development for teachers and librarians. We also lend books to schools and home educators (home schoolers) to support inquiry and encourage reading.

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What is Sound? | Physics for Kids | SciShow Kids

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Amazing Water & Sound Experiment #2 - YouTube

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Amazing Water & Sound Experiment #2 - YouTube

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It's a video about sound. A science song about sound. Also there's a bit about the five senses. That is a description of this video thank you.

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Māori musical instruments – taonga puoro – Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand

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Māori musical instruments – taonga puoro – Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand

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Māori musical instruments - taonga puoro - Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand

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Traditional Māori instruments experienced a revival in the late 20th century, with the haunting sounds of kōauau (flutes) and pūrerehua (spinning discs) now familiar to many New Zealanders.

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Sound is necessary for basic communication, speech and awareness.

Physical World & Nature of Science Strand (Communicating in Science, Engaging in Science)

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- Activity - Making a Purerehua
- Look at traditional Maori Instruments

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Design an instrument that changes pitch (makes different sounds) & explain how this works, class orchestra

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-Tuning forks
- rubber tubing

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Doppler Effect
Parts of Ear
Decibel
Sound vs light

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- Sound is caused when waves of vibration pass through a substance
- Sound vibrations can travel through a variety of materials.
- The number of waves occurring every second (frequency) determines a sound's pitch (how high/low it is)
- The size of the waves determines a sound's volume . Large waves = large sound, Small waves = quiet sound.

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Related to Sound

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Sound for Kids - Music Games, Experiments, Activities, Projects, Science Online

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Sound for Kids - Music Games, Experiments, Activities, Projects, Science Online

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Explore the subject of music and sound for kids with our range of experiments, fun quizzes, music games, science fair projects, cool facts and interesting videos.

Learn about speakers, music, cell phones, the human ear and all kinds of interesting sound topics. As well as activities for children, there are also lesson plans and worksheets for teachers, ideas for parents and free teaching resources for anyone interested in learning about sound, music, acoustics and other science subjects online.

Enjoy our fun sound and music experiments. Make fake snot, experiment with invisible ink, create baking soda reactions, mix oil and water, make bath salts and much more.

Make Music

Create unique sounds and music using glasses filled with water with this fun experiment for kids.

Have fun learning about sound and music with this cool interactive game.

Take a look at these great science videos related to sound and music. Learn how the human ear works, how to make a secret listening device and watch a cool music player in action.

Secret Listening Device

Learn how to make your own secret listening device that lets you hear a range of low level noises and even through walls!

Check out our cool range of sound pictures, photos and diagrams.

Find interesting images of sonar devices, ear diagrams, jets breaking the sound barrier, soundproof rooms and more.

Check out these fun sound facts for kids and learn about frequency, vibrations, thunder, the speed of sound, cell phones, music, the human ear and more.

Sound Facts

Did you know that the loud noise created by cracking a whip happens because the tip breaks the speed of sound? Enjoy more fun sound facts for kids.

Take the challenge of our quizzes related to the science of sound and music.

Can you answer physics questions and solve music word puzzles?

Enjoy classroom ideas and fun activities with our senses lesson plan and printable music word search worksheet.

Get some great ideas for a range of sound and physics based science fair projects. Check out our suggested topics or try listening to your heart beat by making a stethoscope.

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Sound for Kids - Music Games, Experiments, Activities, Projects, Science Online

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Explore the subject of music and sound for kids with our range of experiments, fun quizzes, music games, science fair projects, cool facts and interesting videos. Learn about speakers, music, cell phones, the human ear and all kinds of interesting sound topics.

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Properties of Sound / Titles and concept overviews / Building Science Concepts / What do my students need to learn? / Home - Science Online

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Properties of Sound / Titles and concept overviews / Building Science Concepts / What do my students need to learn? / Home - Science Online

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Properties of Sound / Titles and concept overviews / Building Science Concepts / What do my students need to learn? / Home - Science Online

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Music is a context for concepts of sound with which all children are familiar and to which they can easily relate. This book explores the phenomenon of sound created by acoustic music, but confident teachers may wish to extend the topic through, for example, electronic music, computer-generated sounds, "white noise", human speech, or sounds of nature.

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# 242 Snappy Ruler

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#241 The Matchbox Guitar

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#239 A home made stethoscope

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#240 What's that noise?

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# 244 - Making the distance

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Pg 14 - Purerehua

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Pg 19 - Crystal Harmonics

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Pg 8 - Sound Words - Wuzzle Puzzle
Pg 14 - Straw Oboe

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in this activity, a class or group of students create several soundscapes to gain a greater appreciation of how background sound differs from one geographical setting to another.

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The ears are responsible for hearing sounds and for balance in the human body. The ear has three parts - the outer, middle and inner ears.

Outer ear

The outer ear collects sounds from the environment and funnels them through the auditory system.

This structure is also known as the pinna and is made of cartilage. It collects invisible sound waves from the environment funnelling them into the outer ear. The sound waves are guided down your ear canal towards the ear drum.

The ear drum or tympanic membrane resembles a flexible window that vibrates as sound waves bounce on it.

Middle ear

The middle ear transmits sound from the outer ear to the inner ear

This is a hollow, air-filled space also known as the tympanic cavity. It connects to the back of the throat and nose through the Eustachian tubes.

Ear drum vibrations continue into the middle ear where the 3 smallest bones in the human body are found. These are also known as the auditory ossicles - the hammer (malleus), anvil (incus) and stirrups (stapes) - named because of their shapes.

The main function of these bones is sound amplification. Sound waves make them vibrate, causing sound to be transmitted to the inner ear.

Inner ear

The inner ear is responsible for interpreting and transmitting sound (auditory) sensations and balance (vestibular) sensations to the brain.

This is found in the temporal bone of the head and is made up of 3 related parts - the cochlea (or spiral tube), 3 semicircular canals and the vestibule (labyrinth).

The cochlea is responsible for hearing. It contains tiny hair-like cells connected to the acoustic nerve. This nerve changes energy vibrations in the inner ear fluid into nerve impulses that go to the brain. The brain interprets the impulses received to identify what you are hearing.

The vestibule and 3 semicircular canals are responsible for balance. These canals are arranged at right angles to each other. If you change the position of your head, the fluid in the canals moves, allowing the brain to determine the amount and direction of movement.

Published 1 February 2011

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The ears are responsible for hearing sounds and for balance in the human body. The ear has three parts - the outer, middle and inner ears. The outer ear collects sounds from the environment and funnels them through the auditory system. This structure is also known as the pinna and is made of cartilage.

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Three components are needed for sound:

A source - where the sound is made.

A medium - something for the sound to travel through.

A receiver - something to detect the sound.

Source

Sound is made up of pressure waves that are generated when something vibrates, causing particles to move backwards and forwards and bump into each other.

When we talk, our vocal cords vibrate, making air particles vibrate in the oesophagus (throat), and a sound wave is produced. A fast vibration produces waves that are close together and have a higher pitch.

Trained opera singers can make their vocal cords vibrate at close to 10,000Hz - in musical terms, a C ₆ or higher. The vocal range of a dolphin really puts humans to shame. They have been recorded producing sounds up to 150,000Hz - 15 times higher than the best human soprano.

Many things can act as the source. Under water, snapping shrimps make sound by very quickly snapping together a large claw. The resulting water movement that produces the sound is so forceful that it can stun nearby animals.

Medium

Sound travels at different speeds through different substances. Scientists often refer to air as a standard measure - the speed of sound in air is 343m/s at room temperature but it travels much, much faster under water (1,482m/s).

Sound waves are transmitted by the medium's particles bumping into each other. The closer the particles are, the faster the transfer of vibration from one particle to the next and the faster the speed of sound.

Sound cannot travel in a vacuum, unlike light, because there are no particles to do the bumping. This is why we can see stars in the sky but cannot hear their nuclear reactions. Scientists do sometimes refer to listening to stars or the sky but they are referring to the detection of electromagnetic radiation, not sound waves.

Receiver

For sound to be detected, there has to be a receiver. Often we refer back to human terms of reference - our own sense of hearing. Humans can detect noises ranging from around 20Hz to 20,000Hz depending on age. As you get older, it becomes progressively more difficult for our sensory systems to detect high-frequency (high-pitched) noises, and some people also begin to lose the perception of low-frequency (low-pitched) sounds.

Sound at frequencies below the human range of hearing is called infrasound. Occasionally, if the sound is powerful enough, we can detect these sounds, but it is often a physical response rather than true hearing - think subwoofers and explosions.

Sound at frequencies above the human hearing range - more than 20,000Hz (20kHz) is called ultrasound. Humans have developed many uses for sounds in this range, including diagnostic ultrasound that is used during pregnancy. Medical ultrasound machines use frequencies in the range 7-18MHz (7,000,000-18,000,000Hz).

In the natural world, many animals can detect sound in the ultrasound ranges and can use this to communicate or navigate. A dolphin whistle can include sounds that reach 170kHz, while fish such as herrings have been shown to detect sound at frequencies up to 180kHz.

While we normally think about these concepts from a human point of view, it is important to realise that other animals can often produce and detect sound much better than humans can. If we think our world is noisy, think about what it might be like for some of the species we live with.

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Three components are needed for sound: A source - where the sound is made. A medium - something for the sound to travel through. A receiver - something to detect the sound. Sound is made up of pressure waves that are generated when something vibrates, causing particles to move backwards and forwards and bump into each other.

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Sound is a pressure wave caused when something vibrates, making particles bump into each other and then apart. The particles vibrate back and forth in the direction that the wave travels but do not get carried along with the wave.

When you clap your hands, you force air particles together and then apart. This effect ripples out and away from your hands as a small group of sound waves. The particles close to your hands are pushed outwards and bump into neighbouring particles, and these then move and bump into more particles. The effect is very much like dropping a stone into a pool of water and causing a ripple pattern (sound waves) extending outwards from the original source (your clapping hands).

Similar to water ripples, pressure waves move outwards from the sound source. These changes in particle spacing are also changes in pressure. Pressure increases when particles are squeezed together and reduces when they move apart. It is these changes in pressure that can be detected by organs such as the human ear and are sensed as sound.

We describe the sounds that we hear using several different terms and measure them in different ways.

Volume

Volume (also called loudness) relates to the maximum pressure produced as particles are squeezed together as they are made to vibrate. This is also related to the maximum distance particles are moved from their normal position as they vibrate, much like how tall the ripples are in the pool mentioned before. When you show sound waves on a graph, the amplitude is the height of the waves from their middle position and reflects how loud the waves are.

Loudness of sound is measured in decibels (dB). This is actually a measure of intensity, which relates to how much energy the pressure wave has. Decibels are a relative measurement. They relate the intensity of a pressure wave to a normal or standard pressure.

For the human ear in air, the quietest noises we hear are around 10dB whereas sounds of 130dB are considered painful.

Water is much more dense than air, so the standard pressure is different. This means that you cannot directly convert decibel levels from air to water. (To convert from a decibel reading in air to a decibel reading in water, you should add 61.5dB.)

Pitch

Pitch relates to the frequency, or how many times a second the particles vibrate. The distance between one wave and the next gives the wavelength. For sounds all travelling at the same speed, high-frequency (high-pitched) sounds have waves very close together. Low-frequency sounds have a greater distance between each wave. An extreme example is the low-pitch calls made by humpback whales, which can have up to 100 metres between the pressure peaks of their sound waves.

Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz). For sound, this means the number of pressure waves per second that would move past a fixed point. It is also the same as the number of vibrations per second the particles are making as they transmit the sound.

A sound of 10Hz means that 10 waves would pass a fixed point in 1 second. (Sound travels at a speed of 343 metres per second in air or 1,484 metres per second in water.) Humans can normally hear sounds between 20Hz and 20,000Hz (20kHz).

Noise

Noise is a very subjective term. It can refer to any unwanted sound but is more correctly used to describe sound that isn't rhythmic or pure.

When the sound waves form a single sine-shaped wave on a graph, we hear the sound as a pure note. Tuning forks produce a pure sound, one note (a single frequency) and a very smooth line on a graph. When we combine pure notes, we can create harmonics. Harmonics are the basis of all musical instruments and result from overlaying pure notes.

Noise is produced when the notes aren't pure. The trace on the graph is bumpy and random. Our ears detect this as a less pleasant sensation and often try to screen it out. In terms of listening under water, what we mainly hear is noise - a jumbled mess of sounds with no repeating pattern or clear pure notes.

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Sound is a pressure wave caused when something vibrates, making particles bump into each other and then apart. The particles vibrate back and forth in the direction that the wave travels but do not get carried along with the wave.

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Use this animated video to see three things needed for sound to be heard. We're heading under water to see how the sound of a kina travels.

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Sound on an oscilloscope | Sciencelearn Hub

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Sound on an oscilloscope | Sciencelearn Hub

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In this activity, students play different kinds of sounds near a computer's microphone and watch the resulting visual display created by oscilloscope software.

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In this activity, students take part in a class experiment to locate sounds when blindfolded.

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- The properties of musical instruments are related to the manner in which they generate sound waves.

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- The properties of sound are related to the manner in which sound waves travel through a substance.

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- Sound is a form of energy that, like all other forms of energy, can be transferred or transformed into other types of energy

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Building Science Concepts #19
Level 3/4
How sound makers and musical instruments work

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BBC - KS2 Bitesize Science - Sound : Read

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BBC - KS2 Bitesize Science - Sound : Read

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Sound and vibration - KS2 Science - BBC Bitesize

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KS2 Science Sound and vibration learning resources for adults, children, parents and teachers.

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Searching "sound" — Welcome! — Science Learning Hub

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Searching "sound" — Welcome! — Science Learning Hub

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Tyler DeWitt: Hey science teachers -- make it fun | TED Talk | TED.com

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Tyler DeWitt: Hey science teachers -- make it fun | TED Talk | TED.com

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Transcript of "Hey science teachers -- make it fun"

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TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: High school science teacher Tyler DeWitt was ecstatic about his new lesson plan on bacteria (how cool!) -- and devastated when his students hated it. The problem was the textbook: it was impossible to understand.