http://cnx.rice.edu/content/m11063/latest/ Summary: Lesson plans for investigative activities, appropriate for grades 3-6, that introduce the physics of sound and music, and that explore the ways musical instruments make sounds. Different musical instruments produce sounds in very different ways, but all of them take advantage of some of the fundamental properties of sound - the physics of sound - to make a variety of interesting and pleasant sounds. You will find here a Strings Activity, Wind Activity, Percussion Activity, and Resonance Activity, as well as worksheets appropriate for younger students. All of these explore some basic concepts of sound wave physics (acoustics) while demonstrating how various musical instruments produce sounds. Terms and Concepts Sound Waves - When something vibrates, it makes a sound. The vibrations travel out in all directions from the "something" in the same way that ripples travel out from a pebble that has been dropped in water. But instead of being waves of water, these are waves of vibrations of air: sound waves. Because it is the air itself that is vibrating, sound waves, unlike water waves, are invisible. Frequency - or Pitch - Think of water waves again. They can be close together or far apart. If they are close together, there are more of them; they are more frequent. Frequency is the term that scientists and engineers use to describe how many pulses of a sound wave arrive at your ear in one second. Musicians use the term pitch. A sound with a higher frequency (more waves) has a higher pitch, and sounds higher. Amplitude - or Dynamic Level - Water waves can also be great, big, tall waves, or small ripples. The size of a wave is called its amplitude. In sound waves, the bigger the wave, the louder the sound is. Musicians call the loudness of a sound its dynamic level.
