Imagine opening up a shoe box filled with “sound” that can play a symphony of complexity, using simplicity. Perhaps Thing 1 and Thing 2 would know what to do. Would it be fun to take out a few basis “things” and play, play, play, before you had to put those things away, away, away?
Pas de deux:
Let’s try to captivate and educate young students (perhaps in their middle school years) by developing a small science kit of sound demonstration apparatus that will hold their interest and spark imagination by experimentation. Let’s include a tuning fork and a resonator - two partners dancing in simplicity but igniting the complexity – to help discover resonance.
Placing the tuning fork (that matches the frequency of the sound that is made by blowing across say a 20 ounce pop bottle) near the orifice will result in generating an amplified sound. An unmatched tuning fork placed near the orifice will not have this effect.
Medley:
Geared to an audience of all ages, demonstration apparatus is presented including student versions of Herman Von Helmholtz’s tuning fork sounder, circa 1859, (where an intermittent current in an electromagnetic coil drives the tuning fork which is located near a resonator) and Alexander Graham Bell’s tuning fork experiment, circa 1876, (where a variable resistance circuit due to slight tuning fork contact in a conductive liquid causes a relay to vibrate at the same frequency as the fork). Using the popularity of basic mechanical acoustical apparatus and briefly unfolding the histories behind Helmholtz combining several of his tuning fork sounders to generate vowel sounds and Bell’s first telephone, students are then given careful explanations of the demonstrations. Next, the focus shifts to well developed basic experiments that students can perform in a laboratory setting with emphasis placed on presenting the details of a carefully thought out scientific approach. Project Listen Up (an initiative of the Education in Acoustics Committee) hopes to develop educational apparatus for a broad range of learners as one of their goals.
Finale:
Musicians are always learning, so are athletes and so are scientists. We play the game of baseball as children differently than when we play the game with more years under our belts. But the game is always fun and the later precedes the former. Perhaps in education, the same can be said. [Support by the U.S. Naval Academy.]