Experiments 2

We learned today with Aurora Lipper about the Sonic Boom. So today I am sharing the following Science (Physics Related) Experiment. This is one of 3 experiments we did today. I will post each experiment in seperate posts to limit the length of each post.

Resonance

Supplies Needed:
tongue-depressor size popsicle stick

approximately 3" x 1/4" rubber band
2 index cards
3 feet of string (or yarn)
scissors
hot glue

(About this Experiment)
 Do you remember where all waves come from? Vibrating particles. Waves come from vibrating particles and are made up of vibrating particles.


Here's rule one when it comes to waves.... the waves move, the particles don't. The wave moves from place to place. The wave carries the energy from place to place. The particles however, stay put. Here's a couple of examples to keep in mind.


If  you've ever seen a crowd of people do the 'wave' in the stands of a sporting event you may have noticed that the people only vibrated up and down. They did not move along the wave. The wave, however, moved through the stands.

Another example would be a duck floating on a wavy lake. The duck is moving up and down (vibrating) just like the water particles but he is not moving with the waves. The waves move but the particles don't. When I talk to you, the vibrating air molecules that made the sound in my mouth do not travel across the room into your ears. (Which is especially handy if I've just eaten an onion sandwich!) The energy from my mouth is moved, by waves, across the room.

Steps to this Experiment:
First, You need your tongue depressor and One of the Index cards.

Second, You will need to cut 2 corners of your index card diagnal. (Just 2 corners). Then take your glue gun, depressor and index card and you will want to glue a thin strip going length wise across yor tongue depressor and quickly press your index card on to the depressor. (If your index card is a little bigger then the depressor you can trim it some). When you are through it will look like the below picture.

Thirdly, You will need your other index card. You will cut it in half, so that your one index card is now two. Then you will fold these halves 3 times so that it looks like the bottom picture below.

Fourthly, We will take 1 of our small halves, now square and we will place it at the bottom of our depressor where we will Hot Glue it to the stick. As you can see in the below picture. ( Do Not glue the second one just yet)
Next, we will need our string. We need to tie the string on our small square. (tie a slight knot)
Then we can repeat the above step, gluing the square to the other side of the depressor. As seen in the following pictures below.

Finally, We need our rubberband. We will take the rubberband and wrap it lengthwise as you can see in the noted pictures below.

And this is what your Resonance will look like completed. Now carefully, hold your string and either at your side away from your face or above your head, in a circular motion, propel your Resonance in the air and listen to the sound it makes.


Key Concepts:
Frequency is a measure of how many times something moves back and forth. A swing, a pendulum, a leg of a walking person all have a frequency. All those things start at one place, move, and come back to the same position that they started. This moving and coming back is one vibration. The faster something vibrates, the more frequency that something has. Frequency is measured in Hertz (Hz).


Waves are the way energy moves from place to place. Sound moves from a mouth to an ear by waves. Light moves from a light bulb to a book page to your eyes by waves. Waves are everywhere. As you sit there reading this, you are surrounded by radio waves, television waves, cell phone waves, light waves, sound waves and more. (If you happen to be reading this in a boat or a bathtub, you're surrounded by water waves as well.) There are waves everywhere!


Our ears are very good antennas. They are very effective at picking up quiet, loud, high-pitched and low-pitched sounds. It is difficult for people to make microphones that are as sensitive as our ears. Our ears can pick up and tell the difference between sounds as low-pitched as 20 Hz and as high-pitched as 20,000 Hz. Some animals can hear things that are even higher or lower pitched than that. Our ears and brain are also very good at picking out the direction a sound is coming from.