soundwave and water phone with water background

Each time you increase it, pause to observe the sugar. Slowly increase the volume on your phone.What do you notice about the sugar? Are there any changes? If so, what are they? While the tone plays, observe the sugar on the paper.Set your volume to the lowest possible setting and hit play. Start with the lowest frequency tone available. Open the tuner app (or a YouTube video playing one single tone) on your phone.In this activity, you will be observing the vibrations caused by sound waves as they pass through a model membrane, just like the vibrations that go through our eardrum! Materials

A sound with a very high frequency sounds higher in pitch. We hear different pitches of sound (highs and lows) based on the frequency of the sound wave. Vibrations in your cochlea are transformed into electrical signals that your brain interprets as sound. The vibrations in your eardrum are then transferred through 3 tiny bones inside your ear, into a fluid-filled chamber called the cochlea (pronounced COK-lee-uh). When the sound waves hit your eardrum, they cause it to vibrate, the same way that a real drum vibrates when you hit it with a drumstick. While it does help protect the inside of your ear, your eardrum’s real purpose is to transmit sound. Your eardrum is a very thin membrane that acts as a barrier between the outside world and the inside of your ear. When this wave hits your ear, the first thing it encounters is your eardrum. When the tines move faster there is less time between each compression, resulting in a higher frequency sound wave. The vibrations of the tines repeatedly compress and displace the air particles around them, causing a repeating pattern of compressions that we hear as a single, continuous tone. A continuous sound (like the one produced by a tuning fork) is caused by the vibrations of the fork tines. This creates a compression wave, which travels through the air (much like it did in the water). When you clap your hands, you displace (or move) the air particles between and around your hands. Sound waves travel through air in a similar way. You can see the result both of these events as ripples moving away from your clapped hands through the water. Once your hands meet, the water particles between your hands are squashed together. As your hands move towards each other they gather water, creating a space behind them that the surrounding water particles rush to fill.

To understand this, imagine clapping your hands in a pool of water. What we experience as sound is actually a mechanical wave, produced by the back-and-forth vibration of particles in the air (or whatever medium is around our ears, remember sound travels through water too!). To find a science fair project that is just right for you, browse our library of over 1,200 Science Fair Project Ideas or use the Topic Selection Wizard to get a personalized project recommendation. Good science fair projects have a stronger focus on controlling variables, taking accurate measurements, and analyzing data. This activity is not recommended for use as a science fair project.

Soundwave and water phone with water background