Enquiring into sound

Note: if you are looking for science fair or science project areas, this set of Web pages may help you with ideas for techniques you might use: read with a prepared mind!

Activities Bull roarer Buzz button Controlling pitch Doppler effect Echo effects Locating sound 1 Locating sound 2 Low frequency sound Seeing sound Ultrasound Pan pipes Sound conduction Simple whistle Other pages on this site

How to do it Doppler effect You will need a small piezo buzzer from an electronics store, two pieces of wire, about 1.5 metres long, and a battery to match the buzzer (usually 1.5 volts). Solder two leads to the piezo buzzer, attach the other ends to the battery, and swing it around your head. The frequency shift between "approach" and "recede" is quite audible. WARNING : there needs to be enough room to swing the without knocking down somebody else or their work! This will help you understand Locating sound 1 You will need a large piece (eight metres or more) of corrugated hose, of the sort used on swimming-pool cleaners, and a small screwdriver. Mark the centre of the length of hose, as accurately as possible, and get someone to sit with the two ends of the hose to his/her ears. The rest of the hose should be behind the subject, so your actions cannot be seen. Scratch the hose gently with the screw-driver, and see whether or not the person can locate the sound as coming from either the left of the central mark, or from the right. By doing a large number of trials, identify that part of the pipe where people never make mistakes, sometimes make mistakes, and where they often make mistakes. This will help you understand Locating sound 2 This 19th century illustration is sometimes presented in modern books as an army officer trying to locate cannon by the sound of their firing, but it is also sometimes seen labelled as a ship's captain trying to locate a foghorn. From his clothing, I think the man is a mariner, but I am no expert. Not that it matters: the challenge here is to make something like this, and see if you can make it work. You will need two large funnels, each linked by plastic tubing to your ears, and you will need some sort of support for the whole system, and mabe a compass in front, so the user can directly read off the bearing to the sound source. If you get it to work, please e-mail me a photo of your version of the apparatus . This will help you understand Ultrasonic sound You will need some lengths of 3/4" steel rod, ranging from 30 cm down to about 5 cm, a cathode ray oscilloscope, a microphone, an amplifier, and some string. (Why do I think you might have some trouble doing this one at home? No matter -- push somebody hard enough, and you may be able to borrow the gear!) The longest bar will ring at an audible frequency when struck, but the shortest piece will vibrate at about 30 kHz. This ringing will be inaudible, but the microphone and CRO will reveal that the ringing is still there, even though we cannot hear it. This will help you understand Echoes and echo effects You will need two cardboard tubes, a ticking watch (if you can find one) or other quiet noise source like a piece of paper to crackle, a piece of cloth, and flat sheets of board, cardboard, metal, and glass. Lay one tube on a table and place the second tube at an angle to it, making a `V', then put the sound source at the top of one arm, and your ear at the top of the other. Listen for any sound. Then put a piece of flat sheet at the base of the `V' to act as a reflector. This will help you understand Low frequency sound Marin Mersenne (1588 - 1648) was interested in frequencies. If you pluck a stretched musical string and watch it, all you will see is a blur, how could you possibly count the vibrations? The answer is simple if you know that longer plucked strings give lower frequencies. Double the length of the string, and you halve the frequency. Big may not always be beautiful, but it does have an imponderable majesty about it. Mersenne's plucked strings were a hemp rope more than 30 metres long, and a brass wire 43 metres long. With that sort of length, the vibrations were so slow that he could see each individual wave. By varying the length and the tension on these giant strings, Mersenne was able to derive a formula that tied the frequency of a string to the length, the tension, and the mass of one metre of the wire or string. Mersenne could now predict what the frequency of a stretched wire would be, even if the frequency was too high to count. In this way, Mersenne was able to determine that the frequency of an organ pipe was 150 Hz, by tuning a wire to match the pipe, and then calculating the frequency of the wire. Writing this up, Mersenne employed this dramatic introduction: "A deaf man may tune a lute, a viol or a spinet and other stringed instruments . . . if he knows the length and the mass of the strings." That's all you get on this one. Why should I do all the work? This will help you understand Bull roarer You can make a bullroarer with some string, a hand drill, a 30 cm (1 foot) ruler, and a place with enough room to swing the bullroarer. Drill a small hole in one end of the ruler, insert the string in the hole, tie a knot, and then swing around your head. This works better with a small fishing swivel in the string close to the ruler. These seem to have been common in most cultures around the world, and bull roarers were used by the Australian aborigines for ceremonial purposes. This will help you understand A buzz button You will need a large button, and some tough thin thread or string. Put the two ends of the string through two holes in the button (if it is a four-hole button, use diagonally opposite holes), and tie the two ends of the string securely. Loop two fingers of each hand through the string with the button in between your hands, and flip the button to make it turn once or twice. By alternately pulling and releasing the string, the button will start to rotate, producing a characteristic roaring noise. Harder pulling produces faster rotation, and a higher tone. This will help you understand Seeing sound You will need a piece of large diameter (90 mm stormwater is good) plastic tube about 120 mm long, a balloon, some rubber glue, a small piece of mirror, a source for a light beam, such as slide projector with a "pinholed" aluminium foil cover on the lens, (or better still, a pinholed slide: use any slide that failed to come out, and drill a tiny hole through it). Place a piece of the balloon rubber over one end of the tubing and pull it tight: if you cut off the lower half of a balloon, this will do the job well. Glue the mirror in place. When the glue is set, clamp the tube horizontally, with the light beam shining on the mirror at an angle. Have somebody speak, shout or whatever into the tube from the other end, and watch what the reflected light beam does. This will help you understand Exploring pitch This is another 19th century illustration, this time showing a way of exploring pitch. All you need is a small gear wheel of some sort, and a piece of card to hold against the teeth of the wheel as it turns, so that the card clicks each time a tooth of the gear slips past. If you have a gear with 30 teeth, making two rotations a second, there will be 60 clicks per second, and that will give you a sort of 60 Hz tone. This will help you understand One-tube Pan pipe When you blow across the top of a closed tube, it makes a note, rather like a Pan pipe, which is not surprising, since the Pan pipes are a set of closed tubes. If you blow across the top of a drinking straw when the other end is in a liquid, you can get different notes, depending on how much of the straw is under the surface of the liquid, since this controls the length of the open part of the tube. That's all -- you do the rest! This will help you understand Listen to the strings Use a rubber band to attach a metal spoon to the midpoint of a 60 cm string. Wrap the ends of the string around your index fingers. Rest your index fingers in your ears. Rock your body so that the spoon taps against the side of a table. What do you hear? With a bit of imagination, you may be able to relate this to a common toy, used by children, and involving two empty tins and a single piece of string ( which rules out a pair of stilts :-) There are more experiments with sound This will help you understand Back to the index Whistle blower This is an easy way to make a reed pipe, using a plastic drinking straw. First, flatten the end of the straw by pinching it between your fingers. Then cut off the corners of the flattened part, put that part in your mouth past your lips and begin to blow. If there is no sound, you may need to blow a bit harder or a bit more gently, or you may need to flatten the reed part out more by pulling it gently between your teeth. You can experiment with cutting small parts off the other end of the straw while you are blowing it, or cutting holes in the straw to play a tune, or you may be able to work out ways of joining five or six straws together, to make a very low note. This will help you understand Back to the index

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