Year 4 – Science - Sound

1 Year 4 Science -SoundActivity 1 -Vibrations -Page 2 Activity 2 How do we hear? -Page 8 Activity 3 Loud and quiet sounds -Page 15 Activity 4 -Pitch -Page 21 Activity 5 Pitch Optional Challenge Page 30 Activity 6 -Quiz -Page 33 What is Sound ?Discuss with your family or think about what you already know using the questions below as prompts. What is Sound ?Watch this clip to see to see how the different families of musical instrument create different do the musical instruments make sounds?Think of some words you could use to explain is Sound ?

2 Did you come up with some words to explain how the musical instruments make sounds?Look at the words below. Did you choose any of these words?VibrationVibrateTwangBlowScrapeBan gShakePluckVibrationsAll the instruments are played in different ways, but they all have something in common. They all create sounds by what is a vibration?The balafon and the bongos make sounds when they are hit or banged, causing the blocks or the skin to pan pipes and horn are filled with air, which vibrates when they are strings of the guitar and the gopichandvibrate when they are can see and feel vibrations whenever sounds are place your hand on your Ah!

3 Can you feel the vibrations from your vocal cords?AhhSound SurveyAround your home or on your daily walk there are lots of different sounds. Some places will be noisy, whereas some places will be quiet. The loudness of the different places will even change throughout the day!You are going to carry out a Sound survey of your home or local area to find which places are noisy and which are quiet at different times of day. You may decide to rate each place out of 5, with 5 being very noisy and 0 being totally silent.( Science Tasks Document page 1)What did you learn about in activity 1?

4 What did you learn about in activity 1?We know that vibrations create sounds but how do we hear these sounds? Watch this video to find out Sound is made? Sound is caused by vibration. Vibration means wobbling very quickly back and forth. When you pluck a guitar string, or hit a drumskin, you can see the material vibrate. This causes the air touching the string to vibrate, which causes air further away to vibrate, which causes the air near your ear to vibrate, which your brain experiences as Sound . The moving vibration is called a Sound wave.

5 How our ears workWhen a Sound wave reaches our ear, our outer ear (the part that we can see on the side of our heads) funnels the Sound into our heads down the ear canal. At the end of the ear canal is the eardrum, which is waterproof and airtight. Past the ear canal is the middle ear. Inside the middle ear are the hammer, anvil and stirrup (the three smallest bones in the body) which vibrate and pass the Sound waves to the inner ear, which contains the cochlea, which turns the vibrations into electrical signals. These signals travel down the auditory nerve to the brain, which experiences the signal as 2 Using the information on the slides and the video, create an explanation text showing how we hear things.

6 You could use the sheet ( Science Tasks Document page 2-3) For an extra challenge, try drawing some of your own diagrams and writing some of your own descriptions. VibrationsWe know that sounds are made when something is vibrating in each of these pictures to make a Sound ?Loud and quiet soundsWatch this clip to see if you can identify how different sounds and QuietThe louder the Sound , the bigger the vibration. In the video, you should have noticed that the polystyrene balls vibrated more when she hit the drum harder, creating a louder size of the vibration is called the sounds have a smaller amplitude, and louder sounds have a bigger Does Sound Travel?

7 Sound can travel through solids, liquids and travels as a wave, vibrating the particles in the medium it is travelling in our example, when she hit the drum, the drum skin vibrated. This made the air particles closest to the drum start to vibrate as well. The vibrations then passed to the next air particle, then the next, then the next. This carried on until the air particles closest to your ear vibrated, passing the vibrations into your ear. Hearing SoundsOnce in your ear, the vibrations travel into the ear canal until they reach the eardrum.

8 The eardrum passes the vibrations through the middle ear bones (the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup) into the inner ear. The inner ear is shaped like a snail and is called the cochlea. Inside the cochlea, there are thousands of tiny hair cells. Hair cells change the vibrations into electrical signals that are sent to the brain through the hearing nerve. The brain tells you that you are hearing a Sound and what that Sound Science of Sound ActivityUse the ideas you saw in the clip, or your own ideas to come up with your own way of explaining how different sounds travel for the could use The Science of Sound Activity Sheet ( Science Tasks Document page 4) to plan your ideas and then practise what you will do and say.

9 Make sure your explanations are clear and easy for children to understand. Have fun and get into character!Different SoundsSounds can be loud or quiet. Bigger vibrations make louder sounds, and smaller vibrations make quieter are other ways sounds can be you make a high Sound ? How about a low Sound ? Different SoundsHigh and low are words to describe the pitch of a Sound . The pitch of a Sound is different to the amplitude. Amplitude is a measure of how loud or quiet a Sound is, and pitch is a measure of how high or low a Sound is.

10 High sounds can be quiet or loud, and low sounds can be quiet or loud too!AmplitudePitchDifferent SoundsWatch this clip to see if you can hear and identify how different musical instruments create different PitchWatch this clip explaining how the pitch of a Sound can be changed. PitchOn a string instrument, there are several ways to change the tighter, thinner or shorter the string is, the higher pitched the Sound will be and the looser, thicker or longer the string is, the lower the Sound will vibrations will make a Sound higher, and slower vibrations will make a Sound ways of changing the strings all change the vibrations, which in turn change the pitch of the PitchOn a wind instrument.