Science and Mathematics Initiative for Learning Enhancement (SMILE)
Smile: Sound and Vibration
Using some basic items, you can demonstrate the basic principles of sound, pitch, and vibration. This will allow the elementary student to discover some basic principles of sound and vibrations.
Science Buddies
Science Buddies: Measuring Vibrational Frequency With Light
Strike a key on the piano, and you hear the string vibrating. Just about any object vibrates when it's knocked, but how much and how fast? This project helps you find out. You'll build a simple light-sensing circuit for measuring the...
Utah State Office of Education
Utah Science: Properties and Behaviors of Heat, Light and Sound
How can scientists lump heat, light and sound together when investigating properties and behaviors? This learning module will address that question through a series of activities.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Investigating Sound: Using Pipe Music to Understand Pitch and Length.
In this investigation the student will learn about sound waves and vibration. Students will use pipes to understand that the slower an object vibrates the lower the pitch and the faster an object vibrates the higher the pitch. Next...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Seeing and Feeling Sound Vibrations
Students examine the existence of sound by listening to and seeing sound waves while conducting a set of simple activities as a class or in pairs at stations. Students describe sound in terms of its pitch, volume and frequency. They use...
The Franklin Institute
Franklin Institute: The Science of Sound
This Franklin Institute webpage provides an introduction to understanding sound waves based on 5th grade science lessons.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Traveling Sound
Students explore how sound waves move through liquids, solids and gases in a series of simple sound energy experiments. Understanding the properties of sound and how sound waves travel helps engineers determine the best room shape and...
Physics Classroom
The Physics Classroom: Sound Waves and Music: Interference and Beats
Illustrated diagrams and interactive practice problems show constructive and destructive interference occurring at sound beats.
Other
Bscs: Sound Lesson 1: Sound Makers
How can you tell if something is making a sound? This instructional activity will show that to produce sound, an object must vibrate. Included are a minute-by-minute lesson plan, activities, and teacher discussion points and questions.
Other
The University of Salford: Sounds Amazing
This site has several lessons all about sound. It introduces sound, then covers major principles of waves and the wave equation. Each lesson has interactive activities to keep you interested, and there are even some test questions.
Canada Science and Technology Museum
Canada Science and Technology Museum: Background Information for Sound
Sound! How does it work? All you need to know about it is found here through a series of Q&As. Educators will find useful lesson plans.
OpenSciEd
Open Sci Ed: Visualizing Sound in a Medium
This simulation is a slow motion version of what you might actually see if you could see particles in a medium vibrating.
Physics Classroom
The Physics Classroom: Waves and Sound: Slinky Lab Interactive
Manipulate this virtual slinky that consists of a collection of dots to represent its coils. Grab a coil, and shake it back and forth to create vibrations which travel through the slinky from the location where it is shook to the ends...
Physics Classroom
The Physics Classroom: Longitudinal Waves and Guitar Strings
A reference page including content and animations on longitudinal waves. Understand how sound waves are produced from vibrations in guitar strings to produce longitudinal waves.
Physics Classroom
The Physics Classroom: Longitudinal Waves and Tuning Forks
This resource explores how vibrating objects produce sound waves. The site contains information and an animation.
Physics Classroom
The Physics Classroom: Sound Waves and Music: Standing Wave Patterns
Elaborate on the essential characteristics and the causes of standing wave patterns and relate these patterns to the vibrations of musical instruments.
South Carolina Educational Television
Etv: Nasa Online: Matter and Molecules
An animation briefly explaining how vibrations create sound waves.
Teachers TryScience
Teachers Try Science: Musical Coat Hangers
From the National Science and Technology Centre in Australia comes this easy experiment that shows how sound waves travel and what materials are good conductors of sound.
Physics Classroom
The Physics Classroom: Sound Waves and Music:fundamental Frequency and Harmonics
For musical instruments and other objects that vibrate in regular and periodic fashion, the harmonic frequencies are related to each other by simple whole number ratios. Students learn why these whole number ratios exist for a musical...
Physics Classroom
The Physics Classroom: Sound Waves and Music: Resonance
The focus of this physics tutorial is on the application of mathematical relationships and standing wave concepts to musical instruments in three general categories of instruments: instruments with vibrating strings, open-end air column...
Physics Classroom
The Physics Classroom: Sound Waves and Music: Guitar Strings
A guitar string has a number of frequencies at which it will naturally vibrate. These natural frequencies are known as the harmonics of the guitar string. Students work through several example problems.
Physics Classroom
The Physics Classroom: Waves and Sound: Standing Wave Patterns Interactive
Students investigate the formation of standing waves, the vibrational patterns associated with the various harmonics, and the difference between transverse and longitudinal standing waves.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: Experimenting With Sound/compression Waves Through Vibration
Through inquiry, students will use various objects/materials attached to strings to investigate how vibration causes sounds waves.
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College
Serc: The Nature of Sound With a Slinky
A physics lesson where students investigate how sound can be produced and changed. Students identify vibrations as the source of sound and how it can be amplified and received, and then explore the use of a slinky to explain the nature...