This is Science Week 2023 and we are busy trying out lots of science investigations.
We are learning about how sounds are made and how they travel to the ear.
We are learning all about how our ears look and how they work.
We had some sound buckets. We were able to guess what might be in each bucket, and then match the bucket up with the thing we thought might be in the bucket. We got most of our guesses correct.
We can make funny sounds with balloons. We can get balloons to sing, with hexagonal nuts inside them (smaller ones make higher sounds and larger ones make lower sounds)
There's lots more to learn about sounds.
We were able to identify different items just by the sounds they make.
We discovered that long straws and instruments make low sounds while short straws and instruments make high sounds.
Teacher had a little wind up music box. When she wound it in the air, the music (Beauty and the Beast) played really softly, but when she wound it up when it was on wood, metal or cardboard, the vibrations of the music travelled through the wood (metal/cardboard) and the vibrations were amplified and the music sounded much louder.
We were able to make spoons sound like bells by getting their sound to travel up along a piece of string and into our ears. This was very surprising.
We found that small spoons make high sounds while large spoons make very low sounds.
We also used string telephones. We could see how sounds can travel up the string and get amplified in the yoghurt pots.
We had a lot of fun watching the vibrations from a tuning fork transferring to plastic dishes and on to the the rice and peas in the dishes. Watching the vibrations in water and in a ping pong ball was especially interesting.
Can you think of a strange instrument? Well, you could make instruments out of vegetables! https://www.vegetableorchestra.org/