sound wave experiments for middle school

The Science of Waves: Awesome Sound Experiment for Kids

By: Author Jacquie Fisher

Posted on Published: April 16, 2019

Categories Kids Activities & Crafts , Science Experiments

One of the coolest sound wave experiments your kids will ever try!

We love doing simple science experiments and every once in a while, we find a GEM.

It’s a simple, easy and pretty awesome experiment that explores the science of sound waves and how they travel .

Sound Experiment for Kids

So many of the science activities we do are ones that I’ve experienced before but are new to our kids. 

And honestly, as they approach Middle School age, it’s getting harder and harder to impress them 😉

But THIS ONE! 

This is one of those really cool experiments that they thought was super cool and even I was impressed with ( and as my husband will tell you, I’m not easily impressed 😉

I should have titled this “ Make Your Own Gong Using a Spoon and Fork ” — because that’s exactly what you’ll get to do!

Like our How does a Leaf Breathe? experiment , this sound wave project also explores the invisible side of science.

As you begin this vibration experiment, explain to your kids that you are going to test how sound travels. 

They may not realize that when a ‘noise’ is made, it creates sound waves (which are not visible) that travel through the air and to our ears. 

As with any of our experiments, we always start with a good book to help explain the science concepts!

Books about the Science of Sound Waves

Here are a few great books to pair with this activity along with affiliate links so you can easily learn more about each one:

Sounds All Around (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 1) is part of an amazing science book series that cover all the topics under the sun!  This book explains how sound waves travel, how your ear receives sound and answers for more of the questions kids will ask.

And another fun book, What’s That Sound (Science Solves It! ) has facts & activities related to sound – perfect for kids ages 6 – 10 years old.

Sound Experiments for Kids

You’ll need a few items that I’m sure you can easily find around the house — the affiliate links in our list will give you a quick description of each item:

• A ruler (we found a wooden or heavy plastic ruler worked best)
• Two different size spoons (try using a teaspoon and a serving spoon )
• About 4 feet of string or yarn (this will depend on how tall you are as you can see below)

First, create a loop in the middle of the yarn/string and insert the handle of the spoon. 

Pull tightly so that the spoon hangs in the center of the yarn/string and you have two long pieces of approximately equal length.

Then make a face at your Mom when she asks to take your photo ( this is an optional step, of course ) 🙂

Take each string and wrap them around your pointer finger on each hand. 

Then push the string against each ear (not into the ear but just outside like you are going to plug your ears because you don’t want to hear your Mom ask you to do your chores 🙂 

You’ll want the spoon to hang just below the waist once both ends of the yarn are placed near the ears.

You can see in this photo that you don’t have to use the end of each piece of yarn/string — in fact, as you do the experiment, change how high or low the spoon hangs to see if it changes the sound.

Ok, here’s the big moment …

Once the string in pushed against the ears, have someone GENTLY hit the ruler against the round part of the spoon — and watch the look on your child’s face (priceless!)

Warning : Kids often think that the HARDER they hit the spoon, the louder the sound — be sure to test out this theory too!

If you are using a small spoon, you should hear a distinct bell sound — with a larger spoon, it will sound more like a gong.

Pretty cool!

The Science Behind Sound Wave Experiments

Here’s what’s really happening during the activity — I’ve highlighted some of the science terms that you can introduce to kids when discussing this experiment:

When the ruler hits the spoon, it creates vibrations which make sound waves.  These sound waves travel up the yarn/string and to the ear instead of just spreading out into the air around you.

The yarn acts as a conductor — an object that allows sound waves to travel.

Depending on the size of the spoon and the length of yarn, the sound will appear higher (like a church bell) or deeper (like a gong).

And because the yarn allows the sound waves to continue to travel, the sound of the spoon will resonate or reverberate — meaning they will continue for a while after you have hit the spoon.

Another thing we found was that the only one who can hear the bell or gong sound will be the person with the string near their ears — which we thought was also pretty cool. 

Everyone else in the room will just hear a faint ‘tink’ when the ruler hits the spoon.

More Ideas for Sound Experiments

Ok, we wanted to play around with the experiment a little more — so we also used a serving fork (which is larger than a regular fork).

Do this too and you’ll see that the tines on the fork create a totally different sound.

You can also try different types of yarn/string — you’ll find that the more dense the string, the better the sound will travel.

For more sound wave experiments, try

• the Geeker Speaker Lab Kit which shows you how to make sound waves visible with 5 different experiments!
• the Science of Sound box from Steve Spangler includes up to 10 sound experiments kids can do !

And don’t forget to see all of our simple science experiments!

If you’re looking for more ideas that explore sound waves, try these items:

More Human Body Science Experiments

Fingerprint Science for Kids

How Long are Your Small Intestines?

Looking for more Easy Science Experiments?  Try these!

How do Leaves Breathe?

How much Water is in Snow?

Does Your Food Sink or Float?

27 Simple Science Experiments  

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20 Science Experiments in a Jar

5 Sound Wave Experiments for Kids

This post may contain affiliate links.

Teaching little ones about the 5 senses can be so much fun!  Today I want to show you some fun and easy sound wave experiments you can do with your kids!

Sound Wave Experiments for Kids:

Following are five fun sound wave experiments you can make at home with just a few simple supplies. Your kids or students will love them.   If you are teaching about the human body and how ears work, or maybe have a lesson on the five senses, I am sure you will find one of these that will work perfectly for you!

Experiment  #1  The Magic Ear Trick

The first sound wave experiment is this magic ear trick.   This sound trick makes you think the sound is coming from the opposite direction from where it really is coming from. It tricks your brain!  We saw this at a science museum a few years back and my kids had so much fun with it that we wanted to try to recreate it at home.

To make it, you need small tubing (I got this fish tank tubing ), two small plastic funnels and a piece of PVC pipe or paper towel tube.

Attach a funnel to the end of each piece of tubing. We secured ours with duct tape .

Put the tubing through the pipe with each one going in the opposite direction.

Place the end pieces in each ear.

Have someone talk into the different funnels. You could move it up behind their head so they don’t know which one you are talking into. Then let them guess which side you are talking on. It will be the opposite ear from where you are making it like a magic trick!

It’s really funny to watch kids faces when they hear it. I love his confused look in that picture above!  It got my son laughing so hard that he could not tell where the noise was coming from!

What’s Happening?

The sound is traveling through the tubes, Your brain thinks the one on the right will be heard in the right ear, but it is the opposite!  It tricks your mind and confuses you!

Sound Wave Experiment #2 The Ringing Fork on a String

For this simple sound wave experiment you just need a fork or a spoon tied onto a piece of yarn.  Make sure the yarn is long enough to hang down from your ears to around your chest or stomach.  Tie the fork right in the center of the piece of yarn or string.

Now, tuck the ends of the yarn into your ears and tap the fork on an object. You will hear a large gonging sound or a ringing in your ears!  The funny thing about this is that nobody else hears it like you do.  And everyone is shocked at how loud the sound is!

The Science Behind It:

When the fork hits another surface it will vibrate.  These vibrations make the air around it move, too.  These are sound waves! The vibrations, or sound waves, move up the string and allow your ears to hear it. Sound travels best through a solid object, no the air.

Sound Wave Experiment #3 Make a Cup and String Phone

This is a great classic experiment that’s been around as long as I can remember. But it is still so much fun to do with young kids!   You need two plastic or paper cups and a long piece of string or yarn.

Poke a small hole in the bottom of each cup.  Put the string through the holes and tie knots on the inside to keep the string in place.  Do this with both cups.

Now pull the string tight- it needs to be tight for the phone to work and the sound waves to be able to travel through the string. On person puts the phone to his or her ear and the other to their mouth. Whisper or talk quietly into the cup and the other person will hear the sound of your voice in the cup!

My kids like to make two to use at once, then they can both talk and listen without switching the cups back and forth.

When we talk, our vocal cords vibrate beginning the motion of the sound waves.  Our ears have tiny hairs inside that pick up those sound wave vibrations and send them to our brain to translate.  When you talk through the phone, the string carries those waves from one cup to the other allowing us to hear each other!

Experiment #4 Make a Buzzing Bug Noisemaker

This is a fun experiment!  You can find all of the instructions to make it here:  Sound Experiment: Buzzing Bug Noisemaker Toy

This buzzing bug noisemaker simulates the sound of insect wings that bus when they fly.  It’s simple to make and kids love playing with them! You just spin them around and listen to them buzz.

Sound Wave Experiment #5  Seeing Sound Waves~ Dancing Sugar

This is an easy experiment to put together and a great visual for seeing how sound waves work!

Put a phone in a glass.  Turn on some loud music with a lot of great bass.  Cover the glass with plastic wrap and sprinkle some  grains of sugar on top of the plastic wrap.  You will be able to see the sugar dance!  It is really cool.

Now explain to the kids how this works!  The vibrations from the sound waves are making the sugar move.

Expand this lesson on ears and sound  by reading The Ear Book by Al Perkins with your kids. It’s such a fun one!

Want more sensory activities for the 5 senses? Check these ones out:

• Try this Guess the Spice Activity for the sense of smell.
• Try this Tapioca Pearl Sensory Play activity for the sense of touch.
• Try a Cake Chemistry Experiment for the sense of taste.
• Try Color Mixing with Light for the sense of sight.
• Five Senses Activities for Kids

Former school teacher turned homeschool mom of 4 kids. Loves creating awesome hands-on creative learning ideas to make learning engaging and memorable for all kids!

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Top 10 Sound Experiments: Fun & Easy

Sound, an intrinsic part of our lives, is more than just a medium for communication and entertainment. It is a fascinating scientific concept, offering insights into how energy travels and interacts with our environment.

This carefully curated selection is designed for learners of all ages, covering fascinating topics like vibration, sound waves, pitch, and resonance. These hands-on, educational experiments will not only amplify your understanding of the science of sound but also strike a chord with your innate curiosity.

We hope you enjoy this compilation of sound experiments and that it inspires you to continue exploring the wonders of science.

1. How to See Sound Experiment

The How to See Sound experiment is a fascinating way to explore the relationship between sound waves and visual patterns.

The How to See Sound experiment is a fun and insightful experience that is likely to pique your interest, whether you’re a scientific enthusiast, an artist, or just someone who enjoys discovering the wonders of the world around you.

2. Glass Bottle Xylophone

Seeking an innovative and entertaining technique to learn more about the science of sound? With the help of the Glass Bottle Xylophone experiment, students can build their own musical instrument and learn about the fundamentals of sound.

3. Singing Spoons

Do you want to learn more about the science of sound in a playful and imaginative way? Using just a few spoons, the Singing Spoons experiment is a fascinating and fun project that you should try.

4. Make a Straw Oboe

Make your own musical instrument by cutting a straw to a specific length and blowing across the top to create different notes. Experiment with different straw lengths to produce different pitches.

5. Create a Thunder Drum!

Creating a thunder drum is a unique and exciting way to explore the properties of sound and can help students understand these concepts in a more tangible way.

6. Musical Wine Glasses

The musical wine glass experiment is a fun and easy way to explore the science of sound and create your own musical instrument. By filling wine glasses with different amounts of water and tapping them with a spoon, you can produce a range of musical notes and create your own melodies.

7. Tuning Fork Resonance Experiment

The tuning fork experiment is an established representation of how resonance and frequency work in the study of sound.

Students can see and measure the effects of resonance and frequency in this experiment by experimenting with various objects and tuning forks of different frequencies.

A hands-on introduction to the fundamental concepts of sound and waves is provided by this simple yet interesting experiment.

8. The Doppler Effect with Sound

Through the use of sound waves generated by a moving sound source, students can investigate the Doppler effect in this experiment.

Students can learn about the Doppler effect and its use in disciplines like astronomy and radar technology through this exercise in an useful and fascinating way.

9. Soundproofing Experiment 

Students can learn about the science of soundproofing and its importance in building pleasant and effective surroundings through this project, which is a practical and hands-on learning experience.

10. Standing Waves

With the help of this experiment, students can learn about the fundamentals of wave interference and resonance as well as how these ideas are used in real-world situations.

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Sound Wave Lab

Developed by Trish Loeblein

Students use the “ Sound ” simulation from the PhET Interactive Simulations to understand how different sounds are modeled, described and produced. They also design ways to determine the speed, frequency, period and wavelength of a sounds.

Science Topics

Parts of Waves Speed of Sound Frequency

Process Skills

Scientific Inquiry Observing Inferring Data Collection

Grade Level

Preparation.

5-10 minutes

50 minutes*

*If you are doing this with middle school students, it will take longer.

Learning Goals

Students will be able to:

• Explain how different sounds are modeled, described, and produced.
• Design ways to determine the speed, frequency, period, and wavelength of a sound wave model.

Sound Wave Lab Word Doc Sound Wave Lab PDF Sound Wave Lab Worksheet Word Doc Sound Wave Lab Worksheet PDF

Materials not in Kit

Computers with “ Sound ” simulator from PhEt Interactive Simulations (at least 1 computer for every 3 students)

Optional Materials

String Slinky

Set up the simulator on classroom computers by going to: https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/legacy/sound

Please review the Software Requirements before downloading.

Introduce the Activity

This simulation has been tested with students from grade school to college, and the interface has been intuitive for all students tested. We have observed that too much instruction on the simulation creates a barrier between the students and the simulation.

Doing the Activity

If you would like, use the slinky and rope to review longitudinal and transverse waves.

• Discuss how waves on a string are generated and how energy moves through the string.
• Ask a student to help you by holding the end of the slinky and demonstrate how energy travels from you to the student via the wave on the slinky.

Show the students how the simulator is modeling compression and rarefaction with dark and light colors.

NOTE: Some people think black represents emptiness and light represents more intensity, and some people think the inverse is true. Have students investigate using the first tab, to see that when the speaker is going out, the sound wave looks light. This can be a little tricky to observe, but using low frequency helps. Then go to the last tab and evacuate the chamber, it will make sense that the color goes black like space. Ask the students to determine what is being represented and they should choose black for low density.

Pass out the lab worksheet. Students should work individually or is groups of 2 or 3 to answer the questions.

• When the worksheet asks students for citation, you should just be looking for the source of their information is fine. This is usually a website or from a textbook. It’s good to get students into the habit of being able to back up their facts.
• The last questions about ultra-sound are designed to get students thinking about the size of ultra-sound waves compared to audible sounds.

Key Lesson Terminology

Compression – The region of the wave where air particles are compressed together.

Rarefaction – The region of the wave where air particles are spread apart.

Frequency – Wiggles per second (moves back and forth)

Amplitude – For transverse waves, it is the maximum height of the wave. Larger amplitudes create louder sounds.

Period – The time it takes for one wave to go by.

Wavelength – The distance between two successive, identical parts of the wave. Ex. Crest to crest, or trough to trough.

Optional Extensions

The Anatomy of a Wave (middle school & high school) is good to continue working on the basic properties of transverse and longitudinal waves, including resonance.

Create a wave on a string in the classroom by using a long string/slinky or rope. It should be possible to change the amplitude, frequency and tension while oscillating the string/slinky/rope. It is difficult to change damping, however.

Earthquakes – after this, lesson students are more ready to learn about Primary and Secondary seismic waves and how they travel through the earth. The idea that depending on the part so the earth the wave travels through, it may arrive at a location at a different time.

Modifications

The PhET website can be viewed in many languages, and learners can experiences the simulations in their native language to help them fully understand the material being presented.

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Waves Activities For Middle School: Observations, DIYs, Experiments, And Worksheets

March 19, 2024 //  by  Nicole Muir

Science teachers this one’s for you- teach your students about wave speeds, electromagnetic waves, light waves, and a whole lot more! Science can easily become one of the students’ favorite subjects in school. If your students are naturally curious and want more experiments during class time, you can check out our list of 15 waves activities for middle school for some awesome ideas. 

1. Physical Body Observations

Students will be impressed and amazed when they conduct this experiment because they will learn that their bodies can make waves. It’s a wonderful activity for teaching them about wave basics. What’s even better is that this activity can be used as a starting point for extension activities in the future. 

Learn More: UVM.edu

2. Rubber Band Guitar

Students can learn about different kinds of waves by building their very own musical instruments. Interactive activities like this one are excellent because the hands-on nature of these tasks with helping them remember the lessons for months to come.

Learn More:  Science Buddies

3. Waves Properties Cut and Paste Worksheet

This activity is perfect for elementary and early middle school students. The cut-and-paste nature of this activity will allow students to demonstrate their understanding of the lessons covered. Either complete this as an independent activity or follow it up with task cards.

Learn More:  Twinkl

4. Visible Sound Vibrations

If you’re looking for an easy-to-organize activity that doesn’t require hours of lesson prep, this one’s for you! This visible sound vibration activity is an awesome resource and provides the perfect opportunity for students to define key terms that they are working with.

Learn More:  Extended Notes

5. Spectrogram

This website allows students to work with and manipulate both basic and complex science concepts. Whether you are a full-time or part-time teacher, this website is an excellent resource for your students to work with.

Learn More:  Spectrogram

6. Hearing Test

This digital resource is an awesome resource for you to access. You and your students might be surprised at the results of this activity. Interactive resources will help the information resonate with your students more effectively.

Learn More:  Dosits

7. Kazoo Drum

Learn about sound and resonance with this DIY Kazoo drum task. This task can help learners develop a deeper understanding of wave properties. Having one end of the tube covered creates a buzzing sound that is heartfelt. Have students name the type of wave as they go!

8. Energy and Waves

Analyzing wave properties through visual demonstrations can help teach students about wave motions. You only need a few supplies to make this happen today! Simply gather together a container, a few ping-pong balls, and water to get started.

Learn More:  Generation Genius

9. Science Stations

The possibilities for fun activities are endless when you set up a science station. Customize your stations to teach students about the behavior and categories of waves, as well as the concepts of wave frequency, and a whole lot more!

Learn More:  What I Have Learned Teaching

10. Slink-o-Scope

Using a slinky spring, meter ruler, rubber band, and a few more simple items, you can arrange a demonstration for your students that teaches them about sound waves. Although Longitudinal waves are at the heart of this experiment, be sure to explain where to find the horizontal and vertical axes as well.

Learn More:  Beta.iop.org

11. Slinky Sound Experiments

Did you know that your can repurpose your old slinkies to demonstrate science concepts? This experiment provides a visual for students to focus on in order to help them gain a deeper understanding of the scientific concepts being covered within a particular lesson.

Learn More:  Teaching Ideas

12. Water Whistles

Learn about sound by showing the students a powerful science demonstration. Using just a few simple and inexpensive materials that you probably have in your classroom or house, you can pull off this demonstration in your next science lesson.

Learn More:  My Baba

13. Vibrations and Waves With Salt

After you cut off the neck of a balloon, stretch it over the opening of a plastic cup and sprinkle a little bit of salt over the top. You will play loud music right beside the cup setup. As you do so, your students will witness the salt bounce up and down and “dance” around!

Learn More:  Frugal Fun 4 Boys

14. Oobleck Science Activity

Some students are obsessed with slime and oobleck. This project demonstrates the behavior of waves. The membrane on the device helps to transmit sound from the air into the tube right to the oobleck.

Learn More:  Brave The Elements

Hands-on Activity Make Some Waves

Grade Level: 4 (3-5)

Time Required: 30 minutes

(Assumes teachers have access to Slinkys® and Dominoes®)

Group Size: 2

Activity Dependency: None

Subject Areas: Physical Science

NGSS Performance Expectations:

Curriculum in this Unit Units serve as guides to a particular content or subject area. Nested under units are lessons (in purple) and hands-on activities (in blue). Note that not all lessons and activities will exist under a unit, and instead may exist as "standalone" curriculum.

• Simon Says Big Amplitude, Small Wavelength!
• Simple Instruments
• Echolocation in Action!
• Controlling Sound
• Light Scavengers
• Building a Fancy Spectrograph
• The Visual Spectrum
• Create a Pinhole Camera

TE Newsletter

Engineering connection, learning objectives, materials list, worksheets and attachments, more curriculum like this, introduction/motivation, vocabulary/definitions, activity extensions, activity scaling, user comments & tips.

Waves are used for many reasons in our society: sonar, reading glasses, light bulbs, stereo equipment and lasers all rely on either sound or light waves. For engineers to develop new (and already used) technology, they must understand how light and sound waves work and how to use them in new devices.

After this activity, students should be able to:

• Explain what a longitudinal wave is and give an example.
• Explain what a transverse wave is and give an example.
• Create plots of sin and cosine wave functions (if using extension activity)

Educational Standards Each TeachEngineering lesson or activity is correlated to one or more K-12 science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) educational standards. All 100,000+ K-12 STEM standards covered in TeachEngineering are collected, maintained and packaged by the Achievement Standards Network (ASN) , a project of D2L (www.achievementstandards.org). In the ASN, standards are hierarchically structured: first by source; e.g. , by state; within source by type; e.g. , science or mathematics; within type by subtype, then by grade, etc .

Ngss: next generation science standards - science.

International Technology and Engineering Educators Association - Technology

View aligned curriculum

Do you agree with this alignment? Thanks for your feedback!

State Standards

Colorado - science.

For each group:

• 2 copies of the Wave Worksheet
• 1 Slinky® (groups may share if there are not enough Slinkys®
• 2 meter long length of rope (about the thickness of a clothesline)
• 10 Dominoes®

Do you all remember what we learned about the two different types of waves? Can anyone tell me what the two types are? Super! Now can someone explain what a longitudinal wave is? Great — and how about the other wave, transverse? Who can explain how that one moves? Fabulous! And can someone give me an example of a transverse wave? How about a longitudinal wave? Terrific! Now that we have learned about the two types of waves, we are going to make some ourselves using Slinkys®. I have one more question for you — who can tell me why an engineer would need to know about waves? Well, we are going to talk more about this later on, but sound and light travel in waves, so engineers can use what they know about sound waves and light waves to build radios, televisions, light bulbs and even reading glasses. Engineers use what they have learned about waves to help people in many different ways.

The key points to convey to the students are that a wave is a moving disturbance through a medium and that longitudinal and transverse waves move in different ways. Longitudinal waves oscillate in the same direction that they travel, while longitudinal waves oscillate in a direction perpendicular to their motion.

Before the Activity

• Gather all necessary materials.
• Make copies of the Wave Worksheet (one per student).

With the Students

Class Demonstration

• Have the students form a circle with their right shoulders pointing towards the center.
• Ask students to design a way for this ring of students to create a transverse wave. An idea should come up where a student raises her arms and then lowers them, and then the student behind her raises her arms and lowers them, and so on around the circle. It should be like the "wave" in a football stadium.
• After the students have the hang of it, ask them what the disturbance in the wave was. (Answer: Their raised, then lowered, arms were the disturbance.)
• Ask them if the disturbance travels up and down or horizontally around the circle. (Answer: up and down)
• Ask them if the wave traveled horizontally around the circle or up and down. (Answer: around the circle) The disturbance oscillating perpendicular to the direction the wave travels is the definition of a transverse wave.
• Still standing as in Demo #1, ask the students to describe which direction the disturbance would travel in the ring if the students wanted to make a longitudinal wave. The students should say that the disturbance needs to travel in the same direction as the wave, and around the ring.
• Ask students how can they make a longitudinal wave? Have one student gently push the back of the student in front of her, and then the pushed student should gently push the student in front of her and so on, this will make a longitudinal wave traveling around the ring.
• Ask students: What is the disturbance? (Answer: the push) Is the disturbance traveling up and down or around the ring? (Answer: around the ring) Which way does the wave travel? (Answer: around the ring) Because this disturbance travels in the same direction as the wave, it is a longitudinal wave.

Student/Team Demonstration

• Break students into groups of 2.
• Give each group a Slinky®, rope and 10 Dominoes®.
• Ask them to work with their partner to create longitudinal and transverse waves using all of these items. Most likely they will be able to create both longitudinal and transverse waves with the Slinkys®, but only transverse waves with the rope and longitudinal waves with the dominoes. (Note: Be sure to give the students plenty of time and room to experiment on their own.)
• Instruct students to complete the Wave Worksheet .

longitudinal wave: A wave whose particles oscillate in the same direction as the wave travels.

oscillate: To vibrate back and forth.

transverse wave: A wave whose particles oscillate perpendicular to the direction that the wave travels.

wave: A traveling disturbance in a medium.

Pre-Activity Assessment

Class Review : Briefly review the different types of waves with the students before starting the activity.

Activity Embedded Assessment

Group Discussion : While the class is gathered in a circle, be sure to ask for student input before creating the different types of waves together. If you like, give students time to turn to the person next to them and come up with an idea for creating the wave. This encourages independent creative thinking, without letting the teacher give all the answers right away.

Post-Activity Assessment

Wave Worksheet : With 10 minutes left in class, ask students to complete the Wave Worksheet.

Patterns: Using their observationsa asks students to discuss patterns that can be used to predict future motion.

Share With the Class! : Invite students to share with the class how they used the materials to create the different types of waves. Encourage them (as time allows) to demonstrate their methods to the rest of the class. Make sure they explain which type of wave they are demonstrating.

Safety Issues

During the Class Demonstration, ensure that students do not push each other hard, as a student could hit their head on the other student's back.

Remind students not to roughhouse or hurt each other when using the ropes and Slinkys®.

Students can conduct the "Slinky in Hand: Making Waves" activity from the Exploratorium Snacks website at: http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/slinkyinhand/index.html.

Student may visit http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/Demos.html for excellent animations of longitudinal and transverse wave behavior.

For upper grades, have students use Excel® to create plots of sin and cosine wave functions. For lower grades, do activity as is.

This lesson introduces the concepts of longitudinal and transverse waves. Students see several demonstrations of waves and characterize them by transverse and longitudinal behavior.

Students learn about echolocation: what it is and how engineers use it to "see" things in the dark, or deep underwater. They also learn how animals use echolocation to catch their meals and travel the ocean waters and skies without running into things.

Students learn how AM radios work through basic concepts about waves and magnetic fields. Then students learn general concepts about magnetic fields, leading into how radio waves are created and transmitted.

Exploratorium, The museum of science, art and human perception at the Palace of Fine Arts, Exploratorium Snacks: Science, "Slinky in Hand," accessed January 25, 2007. http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/slinkyinhand/index.html

Russel, Dan, 1999. KetterlingUniversity Applied Physics, Acoustics Animations, "Longitudinal and Transverse Wave Motion," accessed January 18, 2007. http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/Demos/waves/wavemotion.html

University of Chicago, Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica, "Waves: An Introduction," September 11, 1999, accessed January 25, 2007. http://astro.uchicago.edu/cara/outreach/se/ysi/1999/intro2.html

Contributors

Supporting program, acknowledgements.

The contents of this digital library curriculum were developed under a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), U.S. Department of Education, and National Science Foundation GK-12 grant no 0338326. However, these contents do not necessarily represent the policies of the Department of Education or National Science Foundation, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government.

Last modified: August 11, 2023

The Sound Waves 5E Lesson includes materials for every "E" phase, including the Sound Waves Station Lab for Exploration and an interactive PowerPoint with digital INB templates for Explanation.

The lesson also includes introduction materials for Engagement, student-choice project ideas for Elaboration, and assessments for Evaluation.

After completing the Sound Waves 5E Lesson, students will be able to describe sound, how sound waves travel, how physical properties of a medium affect the speed of sound waves, what properties of waves affect what we hear, and what the Doppler effect is. 

Sound Waves Classroom Experiences

Create a powerful student experience to help solidify students' understanding about sound waves. The following experience is also included in the Kesler Science Membership .

Escape Rooms

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Quisque euismod tempus dignissim. Quisque dictum luctus velit, eu viverra urna tristique non. Vivamus at dolor tellus. Cras congue sapien non turpis dapibus, et vestibulum ante ultrices. Mauris eu nisi non sapien fermentum fermentum in eu odio. Fusce congue elit et tortor sagittis, sit amet auctor risus sagittis.

Year-Round Resources

These year-round activities will increase your students' understanding of many middle school science topics. All of these activities are also included in the Kesler Science Membership .

Visual Data & Graphing

You're not alone if your students struggle with understanding graphs, charts, and tables. It's a skill that takes an enormous amount of practice. This resource will help students build a strong foundation in analyzing data and creating their own data visualizations.

Bell Ringers and Warm-Ups

These middle school science bell ringers are an excellent way to engage your students as soon as they walk into your classroom. This comprehensive FULL YEAR resource includes everything you need to start off each science class with an interesting warm-up activity.

Review Board Games

Each game board has been carefully designed to keep students engaged. There are 10 different action spaces on each board and dozens of question cards. All of the actions are related to science concepts and keep the students motivated throughout the game.

Each game is ready to play. Simply print out the board and the cards and let the students enjoy reviewing nine different units.

Essential Questions and Standards

Below are the essential questions and standards associated with the lessons and activities included in the sound waves unit. This topic is only one of more than 100 middle school science topics included in the Kesler Science Membership .

• What is sound?
• How do sound waves travel?
• How do physical properties of a medium affect the speed of sound waves?
• What properties of waves affect what we hear?
• What is the Doppler effect?
• TEKS Science 8.8 C - Identify how different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum such as visible light and radio waves are used to gain information about components in the universe

Kesler Science Membership

Imagine never having to search for another middle school science lesson again. The membership gives you access to ALL of the Kesler Science products in one place (Yes, including everything above).

Say goodbye to long hours of lesson prep.

Sound Experiment for Kids to See Sound

I love science! There are so many hands-on science experiments you can do with kids! Right now we are learning all about sound in our classroom. I have personally found that having a sound experiment for kids to demonstrate what they are learning is the best way for children to really understand the material.

So, I came up with a few sound experiments for kids, including my favourite tuning fork sound experiment and vibrating rice.

Keep reading for a few simple, hands-on ways to making learning about sound fun and meaningful.

The experiments work well in the classroom or at home.

Introducing big, but important concepts, such as sound and hearing, to young children may seem early; however, I am always amazed by how much children of all ages learn from hands-on science experiments.

When children are interested in a topic, they absorb and understand a lot of the material.

Slinky Sound Experiments

Kids are naturally drawn to do experiments and play and explore with their hands. I like to do this sound experiment with kids as a way to introduce big science concepts to young minds.

I have done this experiment with kids aged 3-10 and it is a hit with all of them. All you need is a slinky. A large one works best, but any size will work.

Sound Experiments Steps

I started by using a large slinky and having one child and I hold the ends on opposite sides of the carpet. I banged the slinky to send a wave to the other side. We talked about how sound travels in waves.

A big, fast wave equals a loud sound – like someone yelling. A small, slow sound wave may be someone humming. I either hummed or yelled as I banged the slinky to replicate how the volume and sound travels.

Sound Waves

Sound Experiment

The main idea you want to make clear is that sound travels in waves. Also, it is important that children know that sound waves are invisible.

The slinky is just a fun way to show what we can’t otherwise see.

Some students even noticed the slinky bounce back after reaching the student holding the other end of the slinky. This was a great chance to discuss echoes and how sound bounces.

Fork a Sound Experiments

This is perhaps my favorite sound experiment for kids! I love the excitement that it causes and the ‘explosive’ result. Also, kids of all ages are able to get hands-on and do the experiment. You only need a few materials:

• Plastic Wrap
• Uncooked rice or Large Sparkles (I added some food coloring to mine, but the color is just for fun.)
• Tuning Forks

Since I did this experiment with several groups, I had several containers ready to go. I grouped Children into groups. The smaller the groups the better.

Cover each container tightly with plastic wrap. The wrap has to be tight or the experiment will not work.

To start, I introduced the children to tuning forks. Many had not used or seen one before. Some recognized the fork being used in their music class before.

I gently banged one of the forks onto the carpet and held it up. We could hear a bit of a sound coming from the fork.

I had a child beside me gently touch the fork. They were able to feel that it was vibrating, but as soon as they touched the tuning fork the vibrations stopped.

We talked about the fact that when it was vibrating, it was making a sound. When it stopped vibrating, the sound also stopped.

Children then each had a chance to gently try out the tuning forks. They loved the hands-on experience. (I would suggest making sure to tell children not to hit the tuning forks too hard. Just a bit of a bump will work. Also make sure they are not banging it on anything that could break.)

Next, children went to the tables with a small group. Each group got a container with the plastic wrap stretched across it. I then gave each group a small container of rice. You only need a small amount for each group.

Also, the more rice you give each group the more clean up there will be. The rice will go flying!!! (But that’s also the fun of the experiment.)

Children then pour the rice onto the plastic wrap. They make a guess what will happen once they touch the tuning fork to the plastic wrap.

Once they have guessed, they are ready to do the experiment.

When banged, the tuning fork vibrates, which creates a sound. Tap the fork so that it is making a sound, and vibrating.

Next, touch the vibrating fork to the plastic wrap, but be sure not to touch the side of the bowl. You only need to touch it gently to get the result.

As soon as the vibrating fork touches the plastic wrap, it sends vibrations across the wrap and to where the rice is sitting. These vibrations cause the rice to “jump” until the vibrations/sound stops.

The tuning forks are ideal to have on hand when teaching or learning about sound.

There was so much excitement in the room when the rice started bouncing everywhere! The mess is definitely worth the learning that occurred! Since the materials you need are so simple, you can repeat this tuning fork experiment several times.

I really wanted each child to be able to do the hands-on experiment. After each child got the rice to jump, the group worked together to gather the rice and put it back on the plastic wrap for the next child’s turn.

Repeat as many time as you wish!

Sound Experiments Extension Activity

The tuning fork experiment sparked so much interest in my classroom that I wanted to extend our activity for another science lesson. If you have all of the materials for the fork a sound experiment, all you need extra to do another experiment is water!

As an extension, you can remove the plastic wrap and fill the glass bowls with water. I also added a few drops of food coloring just for fun.

Repeat the experiment above by banging the tuning fork and then touch it to the container with water. Make sure to only touch the water, and not the container.

When the fork is touched to the water it makes the water splash out of the bowl. This sound experiment is an easy way to show kids that sound causes vibrations/movement. Happy experimenting!

For your convenience, this post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases and I may earn a small commission at no cost to you.

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More Hands-On Teaching Ideas

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8 Activities For Teaching Middle Schoolers About Waves & Its Concepts

Waves are all around us, from the gentle ripples on a pond to the crashing waves of the ocean. They are a fundamental aspect of nature and can be found in many different forms, including mechanical waves like sound and water waves, and electromagnetic waves like light. Understanding the properties and behavior of waves can help us understand a wide range of natural phenomena, from the way we see and hear to the way the ocean tides work.

Through the use of different materials and techniques to create waves and observe how they behave, one can explore the properties of waves such as wavelength, frequency, and amplitude. Additionally, students can also learn about the applications of waves in different fields such as communication, medicine, and technology. As the activities are a great way to help students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills and to deepen their understanding of the fundamental concepts in physics, below are some interesting activities on waves that students must try during middle school. 

Exploring the wonders of waves: Engaging and fun activities for middle school

Have you ever indulged in a physics activity or game before? If you have, and loved it, here are 8 engaging waves activities for middle school children that will enhance their foundational understanding of different types of waves. 

1. DIY Wave in a Bottle

Wave in a bottle is a simple wave activity for middle schoolers. Students can easily conduct the wave in a bottle activity, as the materials are simple and easy to obtain. To do the activity, students need to fill a clear plastic bottle with water. Then, place a small object such as a marble inside the bottle.

Next up, shake the bottle to create waves and observe how the object moves. During this stage of the activity, the teacher can encourage the kids to discuss and note the observations. At this time, the teacher can indulge in asking questions like the size of the wave and the movement of the marble.

Additionally, repeat the activity by altering the amount of water in the bottle or by using different objects to observe the effect on the waves. After they have observed how the object moves when they shake the bottle to create waves, students will understand how waves transfer energy and the concept of wave amplitude.

2. Wave Interference Lab

The simplest way to simulate waves is by creating an artificial pool in the classroom itself. Middle school students can observe the phenomenon of wave interference with the help of simple materials like a shallow tray and a rope. To do the activity, create an artificial pool using a shallow tray or pool of water. Next, use a slinky or rope to create waves in the water. Kids can now observe how the waves interact with each other and note patterns such as constructive and destructive interference

Through this activity, students can then observe how waves interfere with each other and create patterns such as constructive and destructive interference. This activity can help students understand the concept of wave superposition and also enhances students’ understanding of the phenomenon of wave interference. 

 3. Sound Wave Experiment

Sound waves can be another important area for middle schoolers to explore. Hence in this experiment, students can explore the properties of sound waves by conducting an experiment with a tuning fork, a ruler, and a stopwatch. 

For this activity, the kids and the educators need to obtain a tuning fork and strike it with a rubber mallet to produce sound. Next, measure the distance between the two prongs of the tuning fork using a ruler. Record this as the wavelength. Furthermore, measure the time it takes for the tuning fork to complete one vibration using a stopwatch. Record this as the frequency.

Later, kids can also strike the tuning fork again and hold it near different materials, such as wood, metal, and glass and observe how the sound travels through the materials. Additionally, this activity can help students understand the relationship between frequency and wavelength and how sound waves travel through different materials. 

Additionally, students will gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between frequency and wavelength and how they relate to the pitch and volume of sound. This activity also helps in the development of measurement skills through the use of a ruler and stopwatch.

4. Waves Unleashed: Speed and Distance Exploration

The activity of wave speed and distance can be done through the help of a day out near an artificially created pool or a waterbody. Here, students measure the speed of waves by timing how long it takes for a wave to travel a certain distance. To understand the same, the teacher would have to take students to an artificially created pool or a body of water with clearly visible waves.

Next, the teachers can have students select a point on the shore as a starting point and another point a known distance away as the endpoint. In the next step, the students time how long it takes for a wave to travel from the starting point to the endpoint using a stopwatch or timer. Now, the students will repeat the measurement several times to get an average wave speed. Off and on, the kids can change the distance between the starting and end points and repeat the measurement to see how the distance affects wave speed.

To make it more educational, teachers can have the students measure the water depth and observe how it affects wave speed. Students can now observe the different wave frequencies that affect wave speed. The activity will help students understand the concept of wave speed and how it can be calculated.

5. Wave Magic: Investigating Water Surface Tension

Using a vibration-producing device or manual force, students can create water surface tension and waves. Students can then explore the properties of surface tension by creating waves on the surface of a container of water. If the physics lab of the school has a vibration-producing device, then that can be used. Otherwise, the teachers can fill in a container with water and manually shake it. 

Create waves on the surface of the water and observe the size and shape of the waves. Next, add a drop of dish soap to the water and keep repeating the shaking motion. Students can now observe how the surface tension of the water changes and how it affects the size and shape of the waves. All of these steps can be repeated with different amounts of dish soap and record the observations. Students can also use surface tension-altering agents such as salt or oil and record the observations.

Students can observe how the size and shape of the waves change as the surface tension of the water is altered. This activity can help students understand the concept of surface tension and how it affects waves. Additionally, this activity can help students to understand how different substances like salt, oil, and soap affect the surface tension of water and how they can change the behavior of waves.

6. Raging Waves: Simulating a Tsunami 

A fun activity to replicate tsunami, tsunami simulation will catch the fancy of all students. In this activity, students can create a tsunami simulation using a model of a coastline and a large container of water. To do the activity, create a model of a coastline using materials such as clay, sand, or foam. Next, fill a large container with water.

The teachers and students can now place the model coastline into the container and position it so that the water is at a low level at the far end of the container and gradually increases in depth as it reaches the coastline. Now, use a manual or mechanical method to create a wave in the water that simulates a tsunami. Observe how the wave approaches the coastline and how it interacts with the coastline as it makes landfall. Record the observations of how the tsunami’s size, speed, and shape change as it hits the coast. 

To make the activity more insightful, Repeat the simulation with different initial wave heights and different variations of coastlines to observe the differences. Through this activity, they can observe how the tsunami’s size, speed, and shape change as it hits the coast. This activity can help students understand the destructive power of tsunamis and how they are formed.

7. Wave Wizardry: Experimenting with Reflection and Refraction of Waves

Unlike other wave activities involving water that study the properties of proper, this activity focuses on the other object to study the characteristics of waves. Students simply have to observe the phenomena of wave reflection and refraction by creating waves in a shallow pool or tray of water using a slinky or rope. 

To do the activity, fill a shallow pool or tray with water. Now, place a slinky or rope at one end of the pool or tray. Hold the end of the slinky or rope and move it back and forth to create waves in the water. Students can now observe how the waves behave when they hit the edges of the pool or tray and when they hit a barrier placed in the water (such as a piece of cardboard or plastic).

Note how the waves change direction and how the height and frequency of the waves are affected. For added insights and knowledge, teachers and students can repeat the activity with different barriers and at different depths to further observe the effects of reflection and refraction. 

8. Sound Experiment with a DIY String Telephone

A string telephone is a simple device that uses the vibrations of sound waves to transmit sound from one end to the other. To make a string, join two paper cups with a piece of string and a needle or a thumbtack. Once this is ready, the activity can be started by punching a small hole in the bottom of each paper cup using a needle or a thumbtack. Next, thread one end of the string through the hole in one cup and tie a knot to secure it in place.

Furthermore, students can now hold one cup to one ear and speak in the other. The sound vibrations travel through the string and are heard in the cup held to the ear. Students can experiment with different string materials, different string lengths, and different types of cups to see how these factors affect the transmission of sound.

As a sound wave activity, a string telephone can be a great way to teach students about the properties of sound waves and how they can be used to transmit information. By building their own string telephones, students can observe firsthand how sound waves travel through a medium, such as a string, and how the vibrations of these waves can be used to transmit sound from one end of the string to the other.

Waves: Beyond the surface – Unique examples of waves in everyday life

While the activities can be useful for kids who have learning disabilities like dyscalculia , on the other hand, there are many examples of waves in everyday life, and they can be classified into different types such as mechanical waves and electromagnetic waves. Here are a few examples of each type of wave:

1. Mechanical Waves

• Sound waves: We experience sound waves every day when we hear music, people talking, or cars passing by. Sound waves are mechanical waves that require a medium to travel through, such as air or water.
• Water waves: Water waves can be at the beach, in rivers, and in lakes. Water waves are also mechanical waves, and they are caused by the movement of the water’s surface.
• Seismic waves: Earthquakes generate seismic waves that can travel through the Earth’s crust. These waves can cause damage to buildings and structures.

2. Electromagnetic Waves

• Light waves: Light waves can be seen every day when we look at the sun, light bulbs, or other sources of light. Light waves are electromagnetic waves that travel at the speed of light and do not require a medium to travel through.
• Radio waves: Radio waves are used every day to listen to music, news, and other broadcasts on the radio. Radio waves are also electromagnetic waves and are used for a variety of other purposes such as in wireless communication and navigation.
• Microwaves: Microwaves used for heating food and for wireless communication are also an example of electromagnetic waves. Microwaves are a type of electromagnetic wave with a shorter wavelength compared to radio waves.
• X-rays: X-rays are used in medicine to create images of internal body structures. X-rays are also a type of electromagnetic wave but with a much shorter wavelength than visible light.

In conclusion, wave activities are a fantastic way to introduce middle school students to the fascinating world of waves and their properties. Being an example of project-based learning for middle schoolers, these activities allow students to explore and experiment with different types of waves, from the gentle ripples on a lake to the powerful seismic waves of an earthquake. They can also learn about the various ways waves are used in everyday life, from listening to music on the radio to getting an X-ray at the doctor’s office.

Through wave activities, students can develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills as they design and conduct their own experiments and analyze data. Hence, these activities can act as great critical thinking games too. As they discover the beauty and complexity of wave behavior, they will no doubt be inspired to continue their journey of scientific exploration and understanding. So, let’s raise the waves of excitement and knowledge in the classroom, and see where the tide of learning takes them.

An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having  just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of  Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’, 

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Fun Sound Experiments for Kids to Add to Your Sound Energy Lessons

Written by Jeanne Sager

Did you hear that? We’re pretty sure we heard that you were looking for some new sounds experiments for kids to add to your teacher toolbox.

While most kids are pretty accustomed to the concept of sound itself — ahem, 0 voices , kiddos — teaching kids how the vibrations of objects translate into sound isn’t just a core part of the science curriculum. It’s also a means to connect kids in a very real way to the world around them. So how do you start teaching kids about sound? And what are some sound science experiments you can try in the classroom? Let’s dive in.

Sound Experiments for Kids

Let’s face it — teaching about sound is going to vary depending on the subjects you teach. If you teaching English, you may start with onomatopoeia , working with kids to add words like “pop” and “bang” to their writing to bring the richness of sound into their narratives. And if you’re a music teacher, you’re going to go straight for the instruments.

We can’t cover all the pretty cool ways out there for incorporating the teaching of sound into the classroom, but we can tell you some of the Teach Starter teacher team’s favorite sounds experiments for kids!

For each sound experiment, students can draw a hypothesis about what they think will happen using the scientific method (grab this free poster outlining the steps they’ll need to follow!), collect and record data, then interpret their results and draw conclusions !

Box & Rubber Band Guitar

• Small shoebox or gift box (no lid required)
• Rubber bands of different widths

The Experiment:

• Have students sort through the rubber bands and arrange them so they’re stretched across the box from thinnest to thickest.
• Have students pluck each rubber band one by one like a guitar and record their observations.
• Students can then add a ruler set on its edge like a bridge across the rubber bands and pluck the bands again, recording observations.

This simple sound experiment teaches kids about sound waves as they learn that the thinner rubber bands produce higher pitches and shorter sound waves! The addition of the ruler helps them to understand how a dampener works to affect pitch.

Screaming Balloons

Balloons are a staple of STEM for teaching kids about static energy, but this sound experiment puts these handy party supplies to use to discuss another kind of energy!

• 2 packages of large balloons (at least enough for each of your groups of students and a few spares in case a balloon is popped)
• Hex nuts, pennies, marbles, and other small objects
• Have students place one of the small objects of their own choosing inside the balloon
• One student in the group should blow up the balloon about three-quarters of the way, and tie it off (they may need a bit of help with this)
• Students spin the balloon around in the air and record their observations
• Students then repeat the experiment with each of the small objects in different balloons.

Your students should make their own observations, but — spoiler alert — the hex nut will likely make a “screaming” noise as its six sides cause vibration across the balloon!

Have more balloon sound fun — download our sound science task cards for a buzzing balloons experiment and five more fun investigations. 

Make Stick Harmonicas

Building their own instruments is a fun way to integrate project-based learning into your lessons, and making your own harmonica is a great way to learn more about sound waves.

• Plastic straws and paper straws
• Large popsicle sticks
• Wide rubber bands
• Smaller rubber bands
• Cut 2 1-inch pieces off of the straw.
• Stretch your wide rubber band length-wise around a large popsicle stick.
• Place a straw piece under the rubber band, close to the edge on one end.
• Place a second popsicle stick directly on top of the one that’s already rubber banded.
• Secure the sticks together at each end using the small rubber bands.
• Place the second straw piece in the middle of your new “harmonica” right between the sticks on the opposite end from the other. (Note: This straw piece should sit above the wide rubber band instead of below it.)

Students “play” their new harmonica by blowing into the straw pieces. To experiment with pitch, they can move the straw pieces around their instrument.

If you have paper straws, kids can replace their plastic straw pieces with paper ones, making predictions about whether or not they think the different material will affect the sound and recording their observations.

Some questions to ask:

• How did moving the straw pieces affect the sound?
• How did the different straw materials affect the sound?

Bonus: Have your students design their own musical instruments  and put them together — like this fun coffee can and rubber band contraption!

Looking for more resources to teach about sound?

Teach Starter collaborator and Texas teacher Heather Chambers created these fun science center activities for third through fifth graders to determine different types of energy, including sound energy!

• Forms of Energy Task Cards
• Forms of Energy Sorting Activity

Or check out our full collection of elementary school science teaching resources !

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Bright in the Middle

Rigorous and Fun Science Activities

5 Awesome Sound Waves Activities to Add to Your WOW Factor Lesson Plan

WOW Factor Lessons , Middle School Science , Teaching Energy

Teaching sound waves to middle school students is SO much fun! There are so many sound waves activities to do! They love noise, right? They make it all day long. Just kidding, kind of! This is one of those topics that students do find a lot of interest in. They love listening to music and also they love to hear themselves talk.

Ok, I’ll stop joking now, but really, this topic can be a lot of fun and there are so many things that you can do so that students will have a blast. Personally, each time that this topic comes about, I’m pretty excited to teach it!

In this post, I will share with you how you can hype your students up for the unit on sound waves and help them to wonder. Then, I will share with you some interactive lessons that you can use to help your students overcome overwhelm with all of the concepts and vocabulary associated with this unit. Finally, I will share some ideas to help widen their knowledge on this topic, taking them above and beyond the minimum of what they need to know. These are ideas to bring the WOW Factor to Your Science Classroom !

I’m so excited to share these sound waves activities!

Sound Waves Activities for Kids – an Introduction

Your students hear sounds on a daily basis. They probably begin their morning hearing an alarm or their parents waking them up. Your students probably blast their music after school and hear their phone ding every 2 seconds!

Your students probably love all of those sounds but may have never thought about what makes those sounds travel or how sound works.

Here are 2 activities you can use in your classroom to get your students excited about learning about sound waves!

Learn more about these specific stations in the Bright in the Middle Shop or on TPT !

Sound Wave Activities – Lab Stations

Stations are a great way to get your students up and out of their seats to explore! You can set up stations around the room before you learn the content to allow your students to make observations about what is happening.

Here are some station ideas:

• Get two cups, 2 balloons, 2 rubber bands and some salt. You will cut the top part of a balloon and stretch it over the top of the cup. Tie the rubber band around to secure it more. You will do the same for the other cup. Place a pinch of salt on one of the cups. Now, hold the other cup, without the salt, at an angle over the one with the salt and pinch the balloon and let it go. You’ll hear the sound and see the salt bounce! That’s the sound waves traveling!
• Another easy station to do is just have your students place their hand on their throat and hum. They can feel the sound vibrations!
• You can also get two cups and string and make a telephone. Kids love this!
• Get two tuning forks of different sizes. Have students tap each one on their desk. Then, students can repeat this, but after they tap it, dip it in a bowl of water. You’ll see the waves created from the vibrations.
• Get an empty tray and wrap 3 rubber bands of different thickness around it. Which produces the highest sound?
• Go out in the hallway and have one student go around the corner. Have them to say something. Can you hear it?
• Fill one zip-lock bag up with air, one with water, and the third with rice. Place your ear against each bag lying on the desk, then tap the desk with a metal spoon. What happens? This is great for introducing how sound waves travel.

You can choose to do all of these, or just a few. You could always choose 3 and have 2 sets of those going at once so that students can explore those 3 different stations, but not have an overwhelming number of students.

These could be used as a WONDER or WIDEN strategy!

NC State Wolf Ears

If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you probably know that I love NC State University! My husband attended there, and I received both of my graduate degrees from there. We are a wolfpack family for sure!

One of the treasured places to visit is right in front of the library. It’s the NC State wolf ears. They are sculptures in the shape of parabolas. There are 2. One person can sit in one, and one person can sit in the other and have a conversation.

Show your students pictures of this awesome NC State addition . Explain what you can do in them. Then, let your students predict how it works. After the discussion, you can show them this video to get their minds wondering!

If you are ever on campus, check it out!

Sound Waves Lessons for Middle School

Now that your students are showing more interest in sound waves, it’s time to dive deeper into the content, focusing on vocabulary and important concepts.

One of the most awesome additions you can add to your sound waves lesson plan are interactive lessons!

Interactive lessons are great for breaking content up into smaller chunks so that it is easier to digest before moving on. In between these chunks, there are embedded activities where students can further process the information they were just given.

There are 3 awesome lessons that you can choose to add into your sound wave lessons.

Sound Waves

The first interactive lesson covers sound waves, sound, how sound travel through waves, how sound needs a medium to travel, compression and rarefaction, amplitude, loudness, intensity, frequency, infrasound and ultrasounds, echolocation, and so much more. Time to learn about how sound waves work!

This lesson answers questions such as:

• Are sound waves vibrations?
• Why are sound waves important?

The interactive activities that are included are an anticipation guide, drag-and-drop activities, exploring outside resources, answering critical thinking questions, and much more!

You can learn more about this sound waves lesson here . You can also find this on TPT .

How Sound Travels

Another great lesson is on how sound travels. This lesson covers how sound travels through solids, liquids, and gases, the speed of sound, how temperature affects speed, and so much more!

• Where do sound waves travel faster?
• Which do sound waves travel fastest through?

The interactive activities that are included include a KWL, exploring outside resources, typing in the text box, drag-and-drop activities, and more!

You can learn more about the how sound travels lesson here . You can also find this on TPT .

The Human Ear and Hearing

Another great addition to your sound waves activities and lessons in the human ear and hearing lesson. This lesson dives deeper into how we, as humans, hear sound. This lesson covers the human ear structures, how sound travels from the source to our brain, and common ear problems.

You can learn more about the human ear and hearing lesson here . You can also find this on TPT .

Sound Wave Activities to Widen Knowledge

Now that your students have learned a lot of vocabulary words and important concepts about sound waves, it’s now time for them to show off their knowledge and expand upon it! Here are 2 ideas that you can do with your students. You can add this to your list of sound waves project ideas!

Create an Instrument

I love to allow my students to show off their creativity. One of the things that you can do in this unit is to allow them to make an instrument. They can make kazoos, stringed instruments, xylophone-type instruments, and so much more!

If you plan enough in advance for this sound waves STEM activity, you can let students start brainstorming and collecting materials beforehand. If you are a last-minute person (not judging, because that can be me!), you can gather whatever your materials you have and see what your students can do!

There are so many videos online that you can refer to for inspiration. Videos by Bruce Yeany are great. You can have your students explore these for inspiration.

You can grade your students on:

• ability to change amplitude
• quality of the instrument
• extra credit: Can they play a song?!

Sound Waves Memes

Don’t have time to go in an make an instrument? Have your students create memes! This is a great sound waves activity you can do in a short class period. Depending on how much time they have, they can create 1-5 memes if they wish. They must create a meme based on something that they’ve learned about during the sound waves lessons!

This can be so much fun, and students are so creative.

Which sound waves activities will you choose for your lesson plans?

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SciGen Teacher Dashboard

Making Waves

Surf's Up (and Down, and Up Again)

A Wave with Words

Modeling Mechanical Waves

Ripple Tank

Sound Stations

Waves of Danger

Lab: Sound Stations

In this activity, students deepen their understanding of waves in a series of quick experiments focused on the mechanical nature of sound. They use a special combination musical keyboard and oscilloscope to examine the nature of waves.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Students see that all sounds are caused by vibrations, and that these vibrations can be sensed through hearing, sight, and touch. They explore different instruments through which they discover the relationship between frequency or pitch and the rate of vibration. Students look at waveforms in a simulated oscilloscope.

Teacher Tips

• There are six suggestions below, and each station can take 7 minutes, more or less. You can set up as many as you'd like, or just pick one activity for everyone to try as a class. Each activity has a PDF of printable pages for the station's suggestions/instructions and recommended discussion questions.
• Consider making cup-phones with Styrofoam cups or paper cups instead of plastic cups, changing the type of string to yarn, or twine, or even wire or fishing line, and the length of string – kids could explore whether those factors make a difference in the quality of the sound, or whether sound is carried better or not.
• If your students do not use lab notebooks, consider making a packet of questions for students so they can write more efficiently (and have it make more sense later).
• Slow things down by reducing the number of stations and adding time for each station for conscientious and grade-driven students who will likely miss out experiencing the phenomena in favor of trying to record everything.
• The closing slide asks students to assess what is vibrating in several different instruments: clarinet, trumpet, drum, flute, piano, guitar, violin. If you have access to these or other instruments, bring them into class. This closing section would be enhanced by having the real instruments on hand.

Teacher Tune-ups

• What types of waves are there, and what do they have in common?
• How can energy travel when matter doesn’t?

Teaching Notes

ACTIVITY OVERVIEW

Set the context for the activity: Feel the Hum (5 minutes)

Illustrate how humans hear (5 minutes)

• Sound Station #1: Electronic Oscillo-piano-scope (5 minutes)

Sound Station #2: Straw Pipes of Pan Flute (5 minutes)

Sound Station #3: Hydro-Xylophone (5 minutes)

Sound Station #4: Making a VERY Old-School Telephone* (5 minutes)

Sound Station #5: Pepper on the Dance Floor (5 minutes)

Sound Station #6: Pluck the Stick* (5 minutes)

Optional Additional Sound Station* (5 minutes)

Review the stations (10 minutes)

Note: The starred (*) activities were developed in cooperation with Kate Maher of M.S. 20 in the Bronx—thank you!

Before sending the students to rotate through hands-on lab and demo stations, lead them in a shared class-wide activity.

Paraphrase:

The human body is equipped to make and sense sound vibrations. In this activity, we're going to make some qualitative observations about the sound we make when we talk and sing.

Lead students as they do this simple demo.

Touch the front and sides of your throat with one to three fingers and hum or sing a note until you find the spot where you can most easily feel the vibration of your vocal cords.

Change the pitch of your hum and repeat step. Try a high note (like “eeee!”) and a low note (like “OOOO!”)

• at a normal volume

Show the slide with the Turn and Talk questions. Direct students to write their answers to the questions in their lab books (as they will at the sound stations).

What do you feel as you hum?

How did you create different pitches?

There's a vein not too far from your vocal cords. Why do we hear air vibrating the vocal cords amplified, but not our blood pulsing through our veins?

What's making the sound and how do we hear it?

Next, watch the looping animation (showing someone talking and someone hearing that person) with the class. Students can draw a diagram like the one shown in the animation in their lab books.

Ask the students to answer the questions in the slide.

Possible answers:

When we hear, our ears are picking up patterns of compression waves in the air.

Vocal cords vibrate to generate sound waves that are our voice. The vocal cords change shape to produce distinct tones that are further shaped and amplified by the throat and mouth.

The speakers receive an electrical signal that vibrates a magnet at the base of the speaker. The diaphragm in the speaker vibrates and compresses the air molecules around it. The compression of those air molecules creates a vibration, or sound wave, which then travels through the air to your ear. It’s like molecules bumping into each other all the way from the speaker to your ear!

You can expand on the anatomical mechanisms of the ear:

While we think of our ears as organs of hearing, the fine hairs are actually very tiny touch sensors that sense movement in the fluid of the cochlea, the curled canal inside the inner ear.

When you hear a sound, what are you actually hearing?

How are sound waves of the human voice generated?

How are sound waves received by the human ear?

When you listen to music, have you ever thought about how your favorite song gets from the speakers to your ear? How does this model change when we're listening to music from a stereo?

Sound Station #1: Electronic Oscillo-piano-scope (5–15 or more minutes)

This special applet can be used for a lot of free exploration. Rather than use it for a five-minute sound station, you may opt to use it with your whole class for some inquiry-based learning beyond the explorations outlined here.

Note: we were inspired by two demos on Academo: the virtual oscilloscope and amplitude modulation . If you have technical issues with our embedded applet, you can use these online demos to cover much of the station's exploration. If using Academo's amplitude modulation app, be sure to turn on the sound and slide A2 all the way down to 0.0, and use the f1 slider only.

Scientists and engineers use a tool called an oscilloscope to compare different waves, including sound waves. The "oscillo-" part of the word means "swing," just as in the word "oscillate."

Musicians don't usually pay any attention to the shape of the waves, but this special instrument makes sound, lets you see the wave as a physicist would see it, and then lets you play around with a note.

• Electronic device (such as a computer, tablet, or mobile phone) with this app loaded (online or saved locally)
• Microphone that can be plugged into the computer (optional)

About oscilloscopes

The teal window of the applet emulates what one would see if an oscilloscope were next to a keyboard. An oscilloscope is a tool physicists use to analyze the quality of sounds and many other kinds of waves. Because an oscilloscope shows the shape of a wave with a repeating pattern, some assume that what they see on the screen is the actual shape of the wave produced by the different notes, but this assumption is not correct. Instead, the oscilloscope shows a graph of the changing pressure of the sound wave. That is, sound is a compression wave, so it would not look like a sine wave or for that matter, a square, triangle, or sawtooth wave.

Think of another electronic tool you may have seen in the hospital or in a medical drama: the EKG or electrocardiogram. The graph seen on that screen is not a picture of the heartbeat, but a graphical representation of a heartbeat, one which health professionals use to get a snapshot of a patient's well-being. It is showing electrical pulses from the heart.

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• 7 straws (with 6 mm diameter)
• masking tape
• centimeter ruler
• permanent marker

Every sound is made when something vibrates. Sometimes it's the skin stretched across a drum, sometimes it's a plucked string. By fine tuning the amount of what is vibrated, you can make notes. At this station you'll make a full octave of eight notes.

• 8 identical tall, thin glasses or jars, preferably with vertical sides.
• pitcher or bucket with at least 6 cups of water
• pencil or wooden dowel to use as a mallet
• towel for mopping up small spills (optional, but recommended!)
• 6 meters of string
• nail (or other device for poking a small hole)

Sound waves are mechanical waves; they need a medium to transmit energy. When we clap our hands, the air between our hands gets compressed. The air molecules bump into each other, creating a vibration that travels through the air as a longitudinal or compression wave.

Preparation

• Measure and cut a 6-meter length of string.

• After making a phone with a 6-meter length of string, you might try different lengths of string so students can see how the length affects the effectiveness of the phone.

Students may be familiar with the sound heard from a passing car whose stereo has the bass set so high and the volume so loud that the neighborhood windows shake. A similar transfer of energy is easy to see with a small boom box and some pepper sprinkled on paper.

For a more ambitious demo, consider building a Chladni Plate or at least watching a video of them in action.

• media player with a decently loud speaker (such as a boom box)
• paper plate
• metric ruler

Every sound is made when something vibrates. Sometimes it's the skin stretched across a drum, sometimes it's a plucked string. By fine tuning the amount of what is vibrated, you can make notes of different pitches. Students adjust the pitch of a simple musical instrument by changing the amount of freely moving wood that gets plucked.

Add other optional sound stations if you have the materials for these higher-end physics demos: tuning forks and resonance boxes.

Caution the students to use the tuning forks gently:

Do your best to avoid dropping your tuning forks. They are very easy to break. They are very delicate. Hold them only by the handle, and strike them only against rubber: if you don't have a sounding block, some science teachers and their students have used the sole of their shoe as a striking surface.

• up to 4 tuning forks
• rubber or soft wooden block for striking tuning forks (important: forks break easily when struck against hard surfaces)
• table tennis ball (usually known as a "Ping Pong® ball") attached to about 1 foot (30 cm) of string and hanging from a stand or off the side of a table where it can move freely
• 2 resonance boxes
• ruler (optional—for measuring an approximate distance)
• a shallow tray of water (like a food service container)

Resonance boxes and tuning forks make it possible to hear a usually undetectable phenomenon: waves transferring energy from one medium to another. They can be quite expensive, however, and you may be able to demonstrate a similar phenomenon by simply bringing the vibrating end of a tuning fork close to the surface of some water, and touching it to the surface.

What did the different stations have in common? How were they different?

Musical instruments, including those we used today, produce sounds when some part of them is vibrated.

What is vibrating when these instruments make sound?

• clarinet (the reed)
• trumpet (the lips of its player)
• drum (its head)
• flute (the air inside the flute)
• piano (strings inside the body of the piano that the hammers hit)
• guitar (strings)
• violin (strings)

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8.2 Sound Waves

How can a sound make something move?

Unit Summary

In this unit, students develop ideas related to how sounds are produced, how they travel through media, and how they affect objects at a distance. Their investigations are motivated by trying to account for a perplexing anchoring phenomenon — a truck is playing loud music in a parking lot and the windows of a building across the parking lot visibly shake in response to the music.

They make observations of sound sources to revisit the K–5 idea that objects vibrate when they make sounds. They figure out that patterns of differences in those vibrations are tied to differences in characteristics of the sounds being made. They gather data on how objects vibrate when making different sounds to characterize how a vibrating object’s motion is tied to the loudness and pitch of the sounds they make. Students also conduct experiments to support the idea that sound needs matter to travel through, and they will use models and simulations to explain how sound travels through matter at the particle level.

Simulations

Unit 8.2 L12 Sound – Tone Generator

Unit 8.2 L10 Sound – Sound in a Medium

Unit 8.2 L5 Hitting the High Notes

Unit 8.2 L4 Sound – Turn it Up!

Unit 8.2 L3 Sound – Feeling the Sound

Unit examples, additional unit information, next generation science standards addressed in this unit.

Performance Expectations

This unit builds toward the following NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs): 

• MS-PS4-1. Use mathematical representations to describe a simple model for waves that includes how the amplitude of a wave is related to the energy in a wave. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on describing waves with both qualitative and quantitative thinking.]
• MS-PS4-2. Develop and use a model to describe that waves are reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through various materials. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on both light and mechanical waves. Examples of models could include drawings, simulations, and written descriptions.]

Disciplinary Core Ideas

This unit helps develop the following elements of Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs):

PS4.A: Wave Properties

• A simple wave has a repeating pattern with a specific wavelength, frequency, and amplitude. (MS-PS4-1)
• A sound wave needs a medium through which it is transmitted. (MS-PS4-2)

Science & Engineering Practices

• Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking: This unit intentionally develops this practice. Mathematical reasoning is key to figuring out the phenomena throughout the unit. The development and analysis of mathematical representations plays a central role in student sensemaking.  Lessons 4-6 involve students in novel uses of math representations when they work with the teacher to figure out how to develop and experiment with a scaled up version of the phenomena so they can analyze non visible motions of objects making sound. They represent an object’s motion graphically and use these mathematical representations of position versus time graphs generated from the movement of an object making louder/softer and higher/lower pitch sounds to describe wave patterns (frequency and amplitude) and to figure out how objects making different sounds move. In lesson 10, students look at patterns in the rate of and spacing in between compression bands as a way to measure wavelengths depending on the initial frequency or amplitude. In lesson 13, students will apply their understanding of linear and nonlinear relationships to identify that the energy transferred does not increase in proportion to amplitude and that increasing amplitude increases energy transfer more than increasing frequency. If students have studied exponential relationships they can further characterize the non linear relationship in the graph for amplitude vs energy transferred as an exponential relationship. Students also have the opportunity to construct equations to describe the relationships between these variables in algebraic terms (i.e., energy is related to the amplitude squared)
• Engaging in Argument from Evidence: This   practice is key to the sensemaking students do in this unit. Students construct written and oral arguments throughout Lesson Sets 1 and 2. Students construct arguments from evidence about whether all objects
• vibrate when they make sounds; to support an explanation for which patterns of frequency and amplitude of a wave are related to sounds that we can hear; and whether matter is traveling all the way from the speaker to the window. They compare claims about whether air is needed for sound to travel to where we can hear it and use evidence from their investigations to select and defend one of these claims. Students provide critiques about their classmates’ explanations and models and respond to those critiques by citing relevant evidence from their investigations and revising their explanations and models.
• Developing and Using Models: This   practice is key to the sensemaking students do in this unit. Although no new elements of this practice are introduced, students use models to make sense of and explain almost every aspect of what they figure out in this unit. Students have frequent opportunities to develop and revise models with a partner, in small groups, or as a class when they are making sense of new science ideas.
• Analyzing and Interpreting Data

Crosscutting Concepts

• Scale, Proportion, and Quantity: This unit intentionally develops this crosscutting concept. Students extend their understanding of phenomena happening at scales we cannot see by using a variety of tools to model and collect data about the vibrations that occur when objects make sounds, and how those sounds transfer energy across media. Lessons 4-6 involve students in novel uses of scale when they work with the teacher to figure out how to develop and experiment with a scaled up version of the phenomena so they can analyze non visible motions of objects making sound. They use the representations developed from using this scaled up object to explain how different sounds are produced. Additionally, students evaluate or help propose other ways of scaling objects throughout the unit in order to provide evidence of what is happening when sounds are made (e.g. slow-motion videos of instruments in lesson 2, laser in lesson 3, simulation in lesson 10). In lesson 13 students use proportional relationships to analyze information from numerical data and graphs of how the energy transferred by a vibration changes with the frequency vs. the amplitude of the vibration. This leads students to conclude that increases in amplitude have a greater effect on the energy transferred by a vibrating object than in frequency.
• Patterns : This crosscutting concept is key to the sensemaking  in this unit. In Lessons 1-3 students begin by using patterns to identify cause and effect relationships about sound sources. In Lessons 4-6 they compare and contrast graphical representations of objects moving and identify patterns about how sound makers vibrate differently for low/high pitched or loud/soft sounds. In Lesson 8 students notice patterns across investigations that sounds can be heard when there is matter between them and the sound source and use this pattern to identify that matter is needed for sounds to travel. In Lesson 10 they measure visual patterns in rate change of compression bands to see how changes in frequency and amplitude at the sound source affect the rate of movement of matter in the system. In Lesson 13 they use charts and graphs to identify patterns in rates of change as they discover that energy is transferred differently for increases in frequency versus amplitude of vibrations.
• Energy and Matter:  This crosscutting concept is key to the sensemaking  in this unit. Students use what they figured out about energy transfer in prior units to figure out how the transfer of energy from a force causes a sound source to vibrate (lessons 2-6) which transfers energy to neighboring particles across a medium, and those particles collide with another object, transferring energy to make it move (lessons 7-14). Students track the transfer of energy across the system from the sound source to the sound detector.
• Cause and Effect

Connections to the Nature of Science

Which elements of the Nature of Science are developed in the unit?

• Science investigations use a variety of methods and tools to make measurements and observations. (NOS-SEP)
• Science assumes that objects and events in natural systems occur in consistent patterns that are understandable through measurement and observation. (NOS-CCC).
• Science carefully considers and evaluates anomalies in data and evidence. (NOS-CCC).

How are they developed?

• Students collect data using a variety of tools including slow motion videos, motion detector, reflected laser beams, and computational  simulations.
• Students use a variety of tools to collect data about the patterns in vibrations that occur when objects make sounds, and how those sounds transfer energy across media, such as slow motion video, ultrasonic motion detectors, lasers, and computer simulations.
• Students discuss and use mathematical methods of finding the average of data sets, including calculating mean and median as a way to combine results from different groups in order to improve the accuracy of the class’s data. They work together as a class to decide how to account for or discard outliers in the class’s data in order to best represent what each group found in their investigations.

Unit Placement Information

What is the anchoring phenomenon and why was it chosen?

Students begin the sound unit by considering an interesting phenomenon: a truck is playing loud music in a parking lot and the windows of a building across the parking lot visibly shake in response to the music. Students generate questions about three aspects of sound phenomena: 1) What makes sound? 2) How does sound get from the truck to the window? 3) Why does the window shake like it does? Students engage in model-based reasoning, argumentation, and computational and mathematical reasoning to develop models to explain these three aspects of the mystery.

Each OpenScied unit’s anchoring phenomenon is chosen from a group of possible phenomena after analyzing student interest survey results and consulting with external advisory panels.  We also chose the truck and window phenomenon as the anchor for this unit for these reasons:

• This familiar phenomenon provides a rich context for students to engage with all the Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs) that are bundled with the Performance Expectations of the unit.
• Hearing loud sounds and sounds with different pitches are common experiences for students and allow students to draw on a wide range of students’ own experiences with other related phenomena.
• The field test of this anchor produced driving question boards on which the majority of the students’ questions and ideas for investigations/sources of data needed to answer those questions, were anticipated by the unit development team and were specifically targeted in the field test version of the storyline.

How is the unit structured?

The unit is organized into three main lesson sets, each of which help make progress on a sub-question related to the driving question for the entire unit. Lessons 1-6 focus on how different sounds are made. Students will figure out that patterns of differences in vibrations are tied to differences in characteristics of the sounds being made. These lessons are designed to push students to develop a mechanism for what causes  vibrations in matter. That mechanism, the elasticity of solids, is at the heart of understanding how sounds can be produced, why they travel, and how they are sensed/detected, and is then built upon in later lessons. Lessons 7-11 focus on how sound travels. They use interactive computer models and other materials to figure out how sound travels from one location to another by causing sequences of vibrations through matter. Lessons 12-14 focus on what is happening at the sound receiver including how we hear and how higher amplitude sounds can cause damage to our ears.

Where does this unit fall within the OpenSciEd Scope and Sequence?

This unit is the second OpenSciEd 8th grade unit and designed to be taught just after OpenSciEd Unit 8.1: Why do things sometimes get damaged when they hit each other? (Collisions Unit) in the OpenSciEd Scope and Sequence. As such, it can leverage ideas about the transfer of energy between colliding objects and the idea that all solid objects are elastic. Additionally, this unit uses ideas developed in OpenSciEd Unit 6.2: How can containers keep stuff from warming up or cooling down? (Cup Design Unit)  regarding  the spacing between particles is different for a solid and liquid versus a gas and that the particles in liquid or gas are moving and can collide and transfer energy.

How will I need to modify the unit if taught out of sequence?

This is the second unit in 8th grade in the OpenSciEd Middle School Scope and Sequence . Given this placement, several modifications would need to be made if teaching this unit earlier or later in the middle school curriculum. 

• If students haven’t developed lines of evidence from previous grades (PS1 in grade 5) that air is matter and therefore air has mass, you may need to conduct additional investigations first to establish these ideas. (e.g. massing a soda bottle before and after opening it; massing a volleyball before and after adding air. )
• If students haven’t developed lines of evidence from previous grades (PS1A in MS) that (a) solids, liquids, and gases are made of particles; (b) the spacing between those particles is different for a solid and liquid versus a gas; and (c) that the particles in liquid or gas are moving, you will need to establish these ideas first. The unit rests on explaining sound as the collision of particles that transfers energy — so so students need to see matter as composed of particles and see how those particles can move, even in solids. 
• The idea that moving objects have energy and that this energy can be transferred through collisions needs to  be developed prior to this unit.  

What mathematics is required to fully access the unit’s learning experiences?

This unit calls upon understandings from all three grade levels in middle school CCSS. Later lessons, in particular, ask students to apply skills and understandings from grade 8 CCSS. Since this unit falls at the beginning of the 8th grade year of the OpenSciEd Scope and Sequence, it’s important to identify which math concepts and skills students may need extra support in applying as these concepts are fundamental to students engaging in Science and Engineering Practices like analyzing and interpreting data as well as using mathematical and computational thinking. 

Mathematical concepts and skills from middle school CCSS are used in the following lessons:

• In Lesson 4, students collect and analyze data in the form of distance vs. time graphs showing the motion of a vibrating stick over time. Students characterize the shape of these graphs as wave patterns, and describe differences in properties like the vertical distance between peaks and troughs of waves when looking at graphs for louder vs. softer sounds. They will also connect the properties of these functions to the physical differences they represent using the axes of the graph to inform what the graph represents. This data analysis calls on the ability to describe the relationship between two quantities using a graph (CCSS.MATH.8.F.B.5) as well as the ability to compare two functions expressed graphically in order to determine key properties about each function (CCSS.MATH.8.F.A.2).
• In Lesson 5, students are expected to exercise these same skills and understandings to interpret differences between graphs of distance vs. time for a stick simulating higher- and lower-pitched sounds. In addition, students define the frequency as the amount of vibrations the stick goes through in a second. They calculate this frequency by finding the unit rate (vibrations per second) using the overall number of vibrations and the total time passed (CCSS.MATH.6.RP.A.2).
• In Lesson 5 and 6, students work independently to interpret graphs of time vs. distance to describe sounds in terms of pitch and loudness using qualitative properties of the functions shown on each graph (CCSS.MATH.8.F.A.2). Depending on the math understandings that students display in Lessons 4 and 5, students might need support in reading and interpreting these graphs. It may help some students to go over the axes of the graph as a class to draw attention to what the graph is showing, and students may benefit from probing questions like, “What differences do you notice between these graphs? How do those differences compare to what we saw in the graphs we made with the motion detector?”.
• In Lesson 13, students discuss and use mathematical methods of finding the average of data sets, including calculating mean and median as a way to combine results from different groups in order to improve the accuracy of the class’s data. They also work together as a class to decide how to account for or discard outliers in the class’s data in order to best represent what each group found in their investigations (CCSS.MATH.6.SP.B.5). Depending on their experience using these concepts in math classes, students may need reminders of how mean and median are calculated. You can support students in recalling these procedures by taking a sample data set (either from the investigation or a random example set) and working together as a class to describe how students could find the mean and median of the set. By doing this with the class or with small groups that could use this extra practice, you can support students with mathematical methods needed to analyze the data the class has collected to draw conclusions about the lesson question.
• Later in Lesson 13, students gather data describing how the energy of a vibration changes with changes to the frequency and amplitude of the vibration. They then use this data to describe and graph functions that represent the relationships between energy and frequency and energy and amplitude. From their numerical data and the graphs they create, students will see that there is a proportional relationship between frequency and energy transferred; when we increase the frequency of the vibrations, the energy transferred increases in proportion (CCSS.MATH.7.RP.A.2). While frequency and energy have a linear relationship, amplitude and energy have a nonlinear relationship where increasing amplitude causes much greater increases in energy compared to increasing frequency. Some students may recognize the pattern on the amplitude vs. energy graph as exponential, where increasing amplitude causes a much greater increase in energy than in a linear relationship like that between frequency and energy (CCSS.MATH.8.F.A.3). 
• By the end of Lesson 13, Students are expected to use these qualitative properties of the graphs for frequency vs. energy and amplitude vs. energy to conclude that the energy vs. amplitude function has a greater rate of change than does the energy vs. frequency function (CCSS.MATH.8.F.A.2). Depending on students’ experience with linear and nonlinear functions, students may identify these differences in different ways. Some students may only be able to state that the amplitude vs. energy graph is steeper or increases more quickly, and they may need support in connecting this observation to the idea that increasing amplitude causes a greater increase in energy compared to frequency. Further, some students may benefit from using the data tables they generate in their investigations to find numerical patterns to support their observations of the two graphs. In this numerical data, for example, they might notice that doubling the frequency doubles the energy but doubling the amplitude makes the energy increase by 4 times. These numerical patterns may be helpful to call out and emphasize for students who are still developing their skills at reading and analyzing graphs.

How do I shorten or condense the unit if needed? How can I extend the unit if needed?

The following are example options to shorten or condense parts of the unit without eliminating important sensemaking for students:

• Lesson 3: If students have completed the Collisions Unit they will have established the idea that all objects bend. You could shorten this lesson to only focus on how the vibration changes with more force.
• 8 and 9: Depending on students’ understanding of particle motion and behavior, you could condense these lessons..
• Lesson 11: This lesson provides an opportunity to apply what they have learned to a new phenomenon and to get feedback from peers before then individually revising their model for the anchoring phenomenon. If short on time, you could use either phenomenon and still have students give feedback and revise that one model.
• Lesson 12:  If short of time, this lesson could be skipped. Usually there will be a category of questions around hearing and how we hear sounds so this lesson helps to fully close out the DQB. In addition, the DCI LS1.D is spread across multiple units in OpenSciEd, this being one of them. So if this lesson is skipped during this unit, more time or support might be needed in one of the other units that address this DCI ( One-way Mirror Unit , Healing Unit , Collisions Unit , and Bath Bombs Unit ).

To extend or enhance the unit, consider the following:

• Lesson 6: We added two supplemental investigations in Lesson 6. In supplemental investigation 6A students can use a camera phone and wooden coffee stirrers to explore the relationship between how changing one variable (e.g. length of stick, thickness of sticks) affects the frequency of vibrations in the video to try to address this. It is currently designed as a differentiation option for students and teachers. Supplemental investigation 6B provides students with an opportunity to explore how our voices can make different kinds of sounds.
• Additionally, several readings are included that could extend the learning. Some readings, such as the Big Ben reading (Lesson 3) is at a slightly higher lexile and could be used independently for those students who are at a higher reading levels or in pairs or small groups for those needing more support. Similarly, in lesson 12, there are 2 additional readings. The second reading allows students to connect what they learned about the human ear to variations in the structure and range of hearing (function) in different animals (explaining a new phenomena) (Lexile 1200-1300). Finally, a third optional reading is included to provide a differentiation option about how humpback whales hear and produce sound (Lexile 1000-1100).
• All lessons: Remove scaffolds provided with Science and Engineering Practices as a way to give students more independent work with the elements of these practices.

Unit Acknowledgements

Unit Development Team

• Renee Affolter, Unit Lead, Boston College
• Susan Kowalski, Field Test Unit Lead, BSCS Science Learning
• Gail Housman, Writer, Ideal Elementary School
• Jamie Noll, Writer, Northwestern University
• Tyler Scaletta, Writer and Pilot Teacher, North Shore Country Day School
• Michael Novak, Reviewer, Northwestern University
• Chris Newlan, Pilot Teacher,  David Wooster Middle School
• Sara Ryner, Pilot Teacher, United Junior High School
• Katie Van Horne, Assessment Specialist

Production Team

BSCS Science Learning

• Stacey Luce, Editorial Production Lead and Copyeditor
• Valerie Maltese, Marketing Specialist & Project Coordinator
• Alyssa Markle, Project Coordinator
• Chris Moraine, Multimedia Graphic Designer

Additional Acknowledgement

This unit was adapted from How Can We Sense So Many Different Sounds From a Distance? , originally developed by the Next Generation Science Storylines project at Northwestern University. Used with permission. How Can We Sense So Many Different Sounds From a Distance? was developed with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to Northwestern University and support from the NGSX Project at Clark University, Tidemark Institute, and Northwestern University.

Unit External Evaluation

EdReports awarded OpenSciEd an all-green rating for our Middle School Science Curriculum in February 2023.  The materials received a green rating on all three qualifying gateways: Designed for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), Coherence and Scope, and Usability. To learn more and read the report, visit the  EdReports site .

NextGenScience’s Science Peer Review Panel

An integral component of OpenSciEd’s  development process is external validation of alignment to the Next Generation Science Standards by NextGenScience’s Science Peer Review Panel using the EQuIP Rubric for Science . We are proud that this unit has earned the highest score available and has been awarded the  NGSS Design Badge . You can find additional information about the EQuIP rubric and the peer review process at the  nextgenscience.org  website.

Unit standards

This unit builds toward the following NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs) as described in the OpenSciEd Scope & Sequence:

Reference to kit materials

The OpenSciEd units are designed for hands-on learning and therefore materials are necessary to teach the unit. These materials can be purchased as science kits or assembled using the kit material list.

NGSS Design Badge Awarded: Jul 13, 2020 Awarded To: OpenSciEd Unit 8.2: How Can Sound Make Something Move? VERIFY

Teacher Resource Center

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Waves and energy.

Students learn that sound is produced by vibrating objects, that sound travels from a source through air, solids, and liquids, and its loudness depends on the amplitude of the wave. The amplitude of the wave defines the waves energy. The frequency of the wave defines the pitch.

Grade Level: Middle School

Subject: Physical Science

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Learn that sound is produced by vibrating objects, that sound travels from a source through air, solids, and liquids, and its loudness depends on the amplitude...

Featured Equipment

Middle School Science Extension Lab Station

Includes the four complementary wireless sensors to the Middle School Science Starter Lab Station.

Middle School Science Starter Lab Station

This Starter Lab Station includes the wireless temperature, motion, light, and pH sensors used to perform key lab activities from the Essential Middle School Science Lab Manual.

Wireless Sound Sensor

The Wireless Sound Sensor measures sound wave forms and sound level in one compact and portable sensor.

Many lab activities can be conducted with our Wireless , PASPORT , or even ScienceWorkshop sensors and equipment. For assistance with substituting compatible instruments, contact PASCO Technical Support . We're here to help. Copyright © 2020 PASCO

Source Collection: Lab #16

Essential Middle School Science Teacher Lab Manual

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Middle School Science Lab Station Activities

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Middle School

• Archimedes' Principle
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• Magnetic Polarity
• Crash Test: Velocity and Inertia
• Blockly Extension: pH

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Sound waves

The topic of sound and waves lends itself well to a wide variety of practical activities which allow students to develop their own understanding.  This list provides a range of suggested activities and teaching strategies, as well as resources which support non-specialists in using equipment.  From 2014, students should learn about:

• frequencies of sound waves, measured in hertz (Hz); echoes, reflection and absorption of sound • sound needs a medium to travel in • the speed of sound in air, in water, in solids • sound produced by vibrations of objects, in loudspeakers, detected by their effects on microphone diaphragm and the ear drum • sound waves are longitudinal • the auditory range of humans and animals

Visit the secondary science webpage to access all lists: www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/secondaryscience

Wave Machine

Quality Assured Category: Science Publisher: National STEM Learning Centre and Network

Sound waves are longitudinal and this film shows how to make and demonstrate a transverse wave machine - but it’s just too good not to include here!

The word “machine” probably gives the wrong impression - this machine is built simply and cheaply from duct tape, kebab sticks and jelly babies. It’s a fantastic introduction to the whole topic of waves showing that, although the wave moves all the way along the machine, the particles (jelly babies in this case) just vibrate. The film provides full details about how to make the machine, but many teachers, having used it once, may want to encourage students to help them make it during the lesson.

Use it alongside the more usual slinky spring which demonstrates both transverse and longitudinal waves.

Signal Generator

Quality Assured Category: Physics Publisher: National STEM Learning Centre and Network

A very helpful film for teachers who want to demonstrate the properties of sound waves but are not yet that confident when using a signal generator.  This film will help teachers to feel much more relaxed about using this equipment and, having had a practice, using it with a class should be much more straightforward.

You’ll see how to demonstrate that changing the frequency changes the pitch of the sound and how changing the amplitude changes the volume.

For the more adventurous, connecting an oscilloscope can show the same relationships visually.

Oscilloscope

This film is included here because teachers who are keen to use a signal generator in their lessons to demonstrate sound waves (see the resource above) may also appreciate some support in setting up and using an oscilloscope.

Range of Human Hearing

Quality Assured Category: Science Publisher: Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET)

This is a simpe activity to using a signal generator, amplifier and loudspeaker to investigate the range of human hearing (young people). 

Noisy Coat Hangers *suitable for home teaching*

Quality Assured Category: Cross curricular Publisher: Planet Science

Start collecting wire coat hangers now! This is an experiment that has to be heard to be believed. Students and teachers alike will be amazed just how much louder sounds are when they travel to your ears via a solid rather than (gaseous) air.

Go on to ask students to use particle theory to explain the difference. 

Unusually, the instructions for this experiment are available in multiple languages. It would be great to use during a languages week, or maybe you’d like to bring science to a Spanish or French lesson?

Sound 11-14

Quality Assured Category: Physics Publisher: Institute of Physics: Supporting Physics Teaching

There’s a lot of high quality information here along with plenty of detail about a good variety of activities from the Institute of Physics. It takes a little bit of time to understand how the resource is structured but it’s well worth the effort.

Old hands may want to turn straight to the Teaching Approaches, whilst those outside their specialist area are likely to appreciate the background information provided by the Physics Narratives and the key points to bring out when working with students given in the Teaching and Learning Issues.

Particularly recommended activities from the Teaching Approaches are

· 'Introducing sources' and 'Sounds meeting detectors'

· 'Pitch and frequency' and 'Range and frequency'

Quality Assured Category: Science Publisher: Ashford Press Publishing

There is a wealth of activities on the theme of sound on offer in this teacher booklet which will amply repay time spent looking through it. Although the booklet itself is dated, the contents aren’t and teachers are almost bound to find something they haven’t seen before.

Many will know of the “bell in a jar” demonstration where a ringing bell becomes inaudible as a vacuum pump removes the air from the jar.  This booklet offers a version that all students can try for themselves: a small jingle bell in a syringe which students can partly empty of air to form a partial vacuum.

Physics in Concert

This resource is highly recommended. It’s an updated and Key Stage Three version of the “Ashfield Music Festival” which some teachers might have used before. The idea is that students play the roles of sound engineer, lighting engineer and electrical engineer (the sound engineer role is what links it to this topic) when thinking about the physics behind putting on a music festival.

It’s designed to encourage students, particularly girls, to study physics further and experience shows that it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Everything you’ll need is provided here including a powerpoint presentation to talk through with students, teacher notes and accompanying students worksheets. It’s a great project for students to get their teeth into either over a sequence of lessons or in a special off-timetable day.

How Science Works: Bad Vibes

Quality Assured Category: Science Publisher: Teachers TV

in this video, acoustic engineer Professor Trevor Cox describes a far-reaching internet experiment to discover the worst sound in the world.  Teachers may wish to focus on one or two aspects of working scientifically when using this film with the resource listed below, such as:

• pay attention to objectivity and concern for accuracy, precision, repeatability and reproducibility

• understand that scientific methods and theories develop as earlier explanations are modified to take account of new evidence and ideas, together with the importance of publishing results and peer review

Using Bad Vibes in the Classroom

This film shows how the video "Bad Vibes" can be used in the classroom to look at working scientifically.  It illustrates the collection and analysis of scientific data, quantitative and qualitative methods, and the role of the scientific community in validating changes in scientific ideas.

Professor Cox talks us through the peer review process, explaining how it shaped his development of a website designed to carry out research on the world's worst sounds.

Physics and birdsong

An interesting and alternative approach to the teaching of graphs and sound. This site provides a free download teaching pack (with full teachers notes and an annotated slideshow) that aims to support students graph drawing skills whilst also teaching them about sound, pitch, frequency, loudness and amplitude. Students listen to birds sounds and then have to sketch frequency/time or loudness/time graphs to help them get a ‘feel’ for how a variable that changes over time can be represented.