We have been so busy in science learning all about the physics of sound. Our experiments and explorations were grouped into three different investigations.
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| Drop Chambers |
During Investigation 1 we learned about sound discrimination, or the ability to tell sounds apart. The students really enjoyed playing Drop Chamber Challenge. Ask your student how we tested our sound discrimination with this fun game. We also used sound discrimination to create a code, and then we challenged our partners to decode our message. During this investigation we also learned that sounds come from a source that is vibrating. The students enjoyed learning about this using long gongs and tuning forks. Have your child tell you what happened when they held the tuning fork up to the ping pong ball or dipped it in the water.
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| Using long gongs and tuning forks to 'see' sound vibrations |
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| Exploring how length affects pitch |
During Investigation 2 we explored pitch. Check out the fun pictures from our exploration with some different instruments. Have your scientist tell you what we learned from this experience. They should be able to tell you that shorter items vibrate quickly and have a higher pitch. Longer items vibrate slower and have a lower pitch. During another exploration we tested to see how tension affects pitch. We learned that increasing the tension leads to a higher pitch sound.
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| Exploring how tension affects pitch |
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| Testing if sound travels through water or air better |
During Investigation 3 we experimented with sounds traveling through different mediums. We first tested to see if sound travels through water. Our class made a hypothesis that sound would travel through water, but not as well as it travels through air. Ask your scientist how we tested this hypothesis and what our surprising conclusion was (sound travels better through water!). We also experimented to find out if sounds travel though solids. In addition to learning about sound, the students also got to practice going through the scientific method during the Investigation 3 experiments. They were pretty sad when they learned that we have completed all of our sound experiments, but they were excited to start our experiments on light.
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| Testing our hypothesis |
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| Can you hear me now? |
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| Investigating if sound travels through solids |
