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What In Vibration?

AVisual Learning Activity
Created By: Lily Moore and Michelle Jaluvka

Overview of Learning Experience

We would start by explaining how sound is produced by vibrations and provide various examples from the world such as animals, humans, instruments, and other everyday objects. We will then use a smartboard activity where the students will hear various audio clips and have them drag the images into different categories (woodwinds, brass, voices, percussive objects). This will help the students solidify their understanding of how sound is produced by various objects through vibrations as well as help them begin to associate similar sounds together.

Media & Description of Integration

We will use images with corresponding audio to help them think critically about how sounds are produced. This media will be presented on a Smartboard activity where they will learn the content by creating categories of sounds. We will have the names of all the categories on the board before they begin to sort the audio. They will then drag each image to the correct category on the screen. We will have multiple students participate and each one will be called on to move one sound to its correct location. After the initial activity, they will deduce which sounds are made with air versus without air and they will recategorize the sounds by dragging the name of the category (either “air” or “hitting/striking) to the images.

Question Sets

1. Group the images and the audio that goes along with them into categories based on how the vibrations are produced.

2. Describe how the sound is produced in each category.

a.Woodwind

b.Brass

c.Percussion

d.Vocal Cords

e. Strings

3. Think of one additional example for each category of sound production.

4. Consider 3 different things you do each day that produce noise. List each activity and describe how the sound is produced.

5. Now group these sounds into only 2 separate categories- sounds that require air, and sounds that do not.

6. What parts of your body produce vibrations?

7. What parts of your body absorb these vibrations? 

Model Student Responses

  1. Woodwinds: saxophone, Brass: trumpet, Percussion: drum, triangle, cymbals, hands clapping, Vocal cords: tiger, frog, human, Strings: guitar, violin

  2. Woodwinds: reed vibrating, Brass: lips vibrating, Percussion: object itself vibrating, Vocal cords: vocal cords vibrating, Strings: strings vibrating

  3. Woodwinds: clarinet, Brass: trombone, Percussion: tapping a desk, Vocal cords: cat’s meow, Strings: cello

  4. Clicking a pen: pen itself vibrates, Tapping a desk: nails vibrate when the surface is hit, Laughter: vocal cords vibrate

  5. Air: saxophone, trumpet, tiger, frog, human, Without Air: drum, triangle, cymbal, hands clapping, violin, guitar

  6. Voice, hands clapping, feet stomping, etc.

  7. Ears/Eardrum

Teaching & Learning Standards and References

2.P.1 Understand the relationship between sound and vibrating objects.

 

2.P.1.1 Illustrate how sound is produced by vibrating objects and columns of air.

 

2.P.1.2 Summarize the relationship between sound and objects of the body that vibrate – eardrum and vocal cords.

These standards are met in our activity, by having students learn and identify what vibrates to produce a sound. They also have to identify what causes the vibrations, like force (striking or hitting) or air. Students are also asked to think and discover vibrations in their own body, like how their own voices produce sound through vibrations in their vocal cords, and how vibrations are received by our eardrums.

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