Students are so fascinated to discover how quickly sound travels. Students will gain understanding of the basic concept of how sound travels through this demonstration.
Singing Spoons:
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1. Loop and tie the middle of the string around a spoon handle, then attach the spoon to the string with a piece of tape.
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2. Hold the string ends and tap the spoon against a table.
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3. Next hold the ends of the string in each ear and repeat step 2.
When you first hit the spoon against the table the sound wave has to travel through air to reach your ear and the sound is weakened. By placing the string in your ear, the sound wave has a direct path to your ear, allowing you to hear the sound more clearly.
An extension to this activity would be to attach more spoons to the end of the string and test the sounds. (York, card number 8)
Some response questions for this demonstration would be:
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1. Do you think a fork or knife would work the same?
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2. What do you think would happen if the fork was plastic?
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3. What if you did not have any string, what else could you use to conduct this experiment?
Activity 6: Culminating Activity
As a culminating activity to this unit students will be placed in cooperative learning groups. Each group will be given guidelines to follow, the outcome will be a board game based on one of the following topics.
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1. Your Ear
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2. Helen Keller
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3. Sound Waves
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4. Speed of Sound
Students will be responsible for creating the board, rules and directions for their games. The questions to be answered in each game will come from information students have learned throughout the unit.