California Department of Education
Sound Waves
Resonate with the class. By watching a couple of videos, pupils realize that sound waves require a medium to travel and can break glass. They then listen to a lecture on resonance and work through a lab to calculate the speed of sound...
Bowels Physics
Waves and Sound
Explore how sound travels as waves with a straightforward lesson that explains the basics of waves in relation to sound. The presentation considers sound waves in both open and closed pipes and shows how to calculate wavelength and...
Discovery Education
Sonar & Echolocation
A well-designed, comprehensive, and attractive slide show supports direct instruction on how sonar and echolocation work. Contained within the slides are links to interactive websites and instructions for using apps on a mobile device to...
Curated OER
Sound Waves Simulation Worksheet
In this sound wave worksheet, learners go to http://phet.colorado.edu/new/simulations/sims.php?sim=Sound and run the simulation to complete 28 short answer question.
Curated OER
Speed of Sound in Air
In this speed of sound worksheet, students determine how fast sound travels in air using a tuning fork of known frequency, a graduated cylinder and hollow glass tubing. Students record their data and calculate the wavelength of a tuning...
Curated OER
Wave Practice Problems
Physics scholars list the properties of waves and calculate the speed, wavelength, and frequency of waves. The worksheet is concise, but covers a variety of wave computational skills. The formatting is neat, but it does have small...
Physics Classroom
Name That Harmonic: Strings
Don't string your class along! Physics scholars discover the fascinating forces behind the music of stringed instruments using an interactive. From a series covering sounds and waves, the interactive asks users to identify nodes and...
Physics Classroom
Name That Harmonic: Open-End air Columns
Ever wonder what really goes on inside a clarinet? Show your young scientists the physics of open-end air columns through an easy-to-use interactive. Learners examine the features of standing waves and calculate frequency and length in a...
Science 4 Inquiry
Musical Vibes with Palm Pipes
Ancient people used musical pipes as early as the third millennium BCE. Young scientists explore the workings of musical pipes to better understand the relationship with frequency, length of pipe, and sound waves. They determine the...
Noyce Foundation
Ducklings
The class gets their mean and median all in a row with an assessment task that uses a population of ducklings to work with data displays and measures of central tendency. Pupils create a frequency chart and calculate the mean and median....
It's About Time
Inferences of Waves
Building on the previous lesson, scholars use Slinkies to create standing waves. They graph waves on a calculator and then apply their knowledge to both sound and light waves. This is the fourth in a series of nine lessons.
Curated OER
Traveling at the Speed of Sound
Students discuss sound and how it's measured, and through experimentation and implementation of the scientific method, they determine the speed of sound.
Curated OER
Sound and Hearing
Students discover how sound is produced by objects and picked up and heard by humans. Using musical instruments, they identify how the quality can affect the loudness, pitch and tone of the sound. They develop their own instrument or a...
Curated OER
Sound--Music or Noise?
Learners are introduced to the concept of sound and how it is presented in the world around them. Using scientific terms, they describe the properties of sound and create their own definitions of sound, music, and noise. They demonstrate...
California Department of Education
Slap Tubes, Flutes, and Xylophones: The Physics of Pipe-Based Instruments
It's the encore to a wave unit. Individuals build either a slap tube, flute, or xylophone as a culminating activity for a physics unit on waves. Scholars calculate the lengths of pipes needed to produce the specific notes for their...
Physics Classroom
Wavelength
Physics class sure can have its ups and downs! The first in a series of seven interactives from the Waves and Sound series introduces young learners to the concept of wavelength. Scholars work through the interactive to discover the...
Curated OER
Can You Carry a Tune in a Bucket?
Young scholars use water filled pipes to play a tune and consider the mathematics behind the sound waves. In this sound wave lesson, students play a tune with water filled pipes. They create a mathematical model to evaluate the...
Curated OER
STRAINING FOR SOUND
Sixth graders use a laser along with computer microphone probeware and the appropriate software, 6th graders determine the speed of rotating objects.An audio amplifier is connected to a solar cell to change the laser light signal into a...
California Department of Education
What Is a "Wave"?
Take a stretch, but don't wave goodbye. An interesting resource provides everything needed to present an introductory lesson plan on waves. Teachers present a PowerPoint defining the types of waves and their characteristics. Pupils use a...
California Department of Education
Waves and Music
Strike the right chord with a musical activity! Instructors provide a lecture on the mechanics of a pan flute. Pupils build their own pan flutes by using straws and calculating the lengths to create a scale. After cutting the straws to...
Curated OER
Wave Speed
In this waves learning exercise, students use the equation for wave speed to calculate frequency or wavelength. This learning exercise has 5 problems to solve.
Curated OER
Tuned in: Tuning Forks and Sine waves
Students explore the characteristics of a pure sound wave produced by a tuning fork. They use sine waves to find a curve to fit the sound wave data produced by the tuning fork. A CBL and microphone is required for this activity.
Curated OER
Frequency vs. Size
Students identify and interpret sound as a vibration and what period and frequency are. They also divide the various types of objects so that all objects are explored and the procedures are determined by the students.
Finally, students...
Curated OER
Name That Tune: Matching Musical Tones Through Waveform Analysis
Pupils detect the waveform of musical notes to determine the code for the "safe" in this forensics simulation lesson. They use a microphone and tuning forks along with Vernier EasyData on their graphing calculator to analyze five musical...