How Does Sound Travel Through A String?
Grade Level: First Grade
Book: Physical Science Unit: Energy Module: Sound Energy
Objective:
Use a classic children’s game to demonstrate the ability of sound to travel through an object.
Materials:
- Paper or plastic cups
- Scissors
- String
- Tape
- A friend
Experimental Procedure:
- Using the point of the scissors, poke a hole in the middle of the bottom of each cup.
- Stand a few feet away from a friend and talk to each other in normal voices. Keep moving apart until you can no longer hear each other well enough to have a conversation.
- Hold one of the cups up to your mouth and speak into it while your friend listens into the other. Can you hear each other?
- Next cut a length of string long enough to stretch between you and your friend when you could no longer talk to each other.
- Poke the ends of the string through the holes in the bottoms of the cups and tape the ends securely to these bottoms.
- Hold onto one cup and have your friend hold onto the other and walk away until the string is taut.
- Talk into one cup while your friend holds the other cup over her ear. Switch. Now can you hear each other through the cups?
- Discuss the possible reason for why attaching the cups with the string allowed you to each other.
Related Lesson:
