BFSU LESSON C 2 - SOUND, VIBRATIONS AND ENERGY

Our BFSU lesson this week was on sound, vibrations and energy.

The objectives were:

1. Understand and use the following words in their proper context, vibrations, tone, pitch, frequency and amplitude.
2. Demonstrate and tell how sound and vibrations are related.
3. Analyse musical instruments and voice in terms of producing vibrations.
4. Describe  how we make sound with our voices.
5. Demonstrate and tell how pitch depends on frequency of vibrations.
6. Model how sound is transmitted.
7. Describe how the ear picks up vibrations and translates them into hearing.

For part 1 we experimented with larger and smaller elastic bands to produce a tone and how that tone is affected by the size as well as the tension of the band.  Smaller band and more tension on the band the higher the pitch.     We also experimented with a little guitar to illustrate this lesson as well as spoke about the larynx and how the vocal cords act in the same way as the rubber bands to produce different pitches.   We have covered this in Human anatomy with Apologia already so the children knew quite a lot about the larynx as well as the eardrum.

 

To illustrate the transmission of sound we rolled a marble towards three other stationary marbles alone a grooved surface to show the transfer of movement energy from the rolling marble to the next marble and then the next and now they all remain stationary after knocking into one another except for the last one, which rolls on. 

 

This was used to illustrate that the air particles behave in the same way. "Bumping" into each other all the way up to the eardrum, then transferring the vibrations to the eardrum, and  therefore the sound.

 

This exercise in movement energy required the background of the previous lesson on the various energies, thereby building on the knowledge.