Activity 3: Sound is a wave

Catagory: Sound

Target Group: 3 to 6 year old children in nursery school

Aims: The children realize that sound can be make visible, that sound can move items

Where? the group’s room

How long? Approx. 45 minutes

What? Experiments concerning sound, make a sound cannon

Preparation:

Material:

hand drums, CD player, grains of rice / pins, a bowl filled with water, a stone, milk, food colour, wine glasses, cardboard tubes, thin plastic foil, cardboard paper, thin slips of paper, pencil, rubber, Sellotape

Video download

Steps:

Situation / Problem:

The children throw a stone into a bowl filled with water / milk / food colour. Waves appear. Tones produce waves in the air. Can we also see the tone that we hear?

Exploring – Developing Phase:

Experiment 1: Put a CD player next to a hand drum, put rice grains or pins on the drum, turn on the CD player, turn the volume up and down.

Experiment 2: Put several glasses filled with different quantities of water into the middle, the children slide a damp finger over the edge of the glass, singing sounds are produced

Make a sound cannon:

- glue a circle made of cardboard which has a

little hole in the middle on the opening of a

tube

- draw a thin plastic foil over the other opening

- fold a thin paper slip at a right angle and glue

it on a table

- hold the tube so that the hole points in the

direction of the paper slip

- knock on the plastic foil

Scientific Explanation:

Experiment 1: Sound travels through the air, reaches the drum and makes the surface of the drum swing.

Experiment 2: The tones are produced by the finger that rubs over tiny uneven spots in the glass, that is what makes the glass swing and produces a sound.

Make a sound cannon: The knocking produces the sound waves that travel through the tube. Sound waves are air vibrations which push against the paper slip. 

Attention!

References:

Aerdley, Neil und Burnie, David: Spannende Experimente aus Natur und Technik. Bindlach 1998