the sound of science

What a wonderful way to spend my 35th trip around the sun! Today was the Pepper Festival in Chapel Hill and the garage creative helped celebrate by bringing cardboard, makedo, a sound exhibit, and making sound sandwiches with LOTS of kids!

To build the exhibit, I bought six mixing bowls, attached them to plywood, had my daughters paint, and then attached wooden and plastic spoons. Kids loved banging on the bowls, the different size bowls really had different sounds and sounded like wind chimes.

ready to see how it sounds

the sound of awesome

We also made some of my favorite and easy sounds makers in the world to go along with the exhibit, sound sandwiches. I have done this SO many times and no matter the age, kids and adults are always surprised about what they hear! To do this you need 4 things:

• Tongue Depressors (thick popsicle sticks)
• Straws
• Two different widths of rubber-bands (preferably one thick and one thin)

To start, wrap the thick rubber-band around one tongue depressor and put one straw on top and one underneath (see picture 1). Then put the other tongue depressor on top, wrap both edges of the tongue depressors (picture 2) and blow between the two straws (picture 3)! Try moving the straws closer together and then farther apart while blowing, can you hear the changes in pitch?

What you are hearing is the vibration from the rubber band. For more information about the science behind sound, follow the sound of science link.

Musically yours,

The garage creative