Sound Wave Activities

Now that we know a bit about how sound waves work, let’s explore them in action!

Balloon Amplifier
Want to make the world’s easiest amplifier?

You Need:

1. A Balloon

To Do:
Blow up a balloon, hold it up, and tap on it. It doesn’t make a super loud sound. Next,
hold the balloon up to your child’s ear and lightly tap on it. It sounds pretty loud!

Why does this happen? When you blow up a balloon you are packing it with air
molecules. They are very close together and transmit sound waves super well
compared to the air just around us normally.

When we tapped the balloon while we were just holding it those waves had to move
through the less compressed ambient air to get to our ears, and the sound is softer.

When we hold the balloon up to our ears the sound just has to get through the tightly
packed molecules in the balloon and we hear a louder sound. It is amplified.

See Sound
Can you see sound? Well, we can’t see the sound waves as they move through the
air. (Though picture the waves you see when you drop a rock into water. They look a
lot like that!) But we can see the vibrations that create sound transmitted between
surfaces with a little help.

You Need:

1. Big Bowl
2. Plastic Wrap
3. Uncooked Rice
4. Metal Pan
5. Metal Spoon

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To Do:
Put the plastic wrap tightly over the bowl. (One sheet, as tight as you can get it.) Put
about 1 teaspoon of rice on the plastic.

Then hold the metal pan close to the bowl and have your child hit it with the spoon. The
harder they hit it the better. The rice will dance!

What is happening is that the pan vibrates, creating a sound wave. This wave is
transmitted through the air molecules and cause the plastic wrap to start vibrating as
well, making the rice dance!

You are seeing the result of the sound waves in the rice. Are any patterns formed? Try
hitting the pan harder and then more gently. How does the behavior of the rice change?
If you want to be a cool mom see if your child can hit the pan hard enough to bounce
the rice right off the plastic!

Transmit Sound Through String

Remember making telephones with your friends using cans and string? Yeah, me
neither. I’m not that old. (And how did kids drill holes in the cans anyway?) But we can
use this idea to show kids how sound travels through a medium.
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You Need:

1. A Long Piece of Yarn

2. 2 Spoons of Different Sizes
3. A Pencil

To Do:
Take the yarn and tie it around the spoon so the spoon is in the middle of the
piece. Take the two long pieces on either side and have your child hold them up to their
ears.

You want to bunch up the string loosely and have them put it in their ears. Not too far
(safety!), more like you are just trying to block out other sounds. Then tap on the spoon
with the pencil. And watch their faces.

Hitting the spoon with the pencil causes the spoon to vibrate. Remember, sound needs
a medium to travel through, and in this case, the yarn is that medium. It transmits the
sound directly to your ears.

What makes it so much louder? In an open room, sound waves transmit in all
directions. So what you hear is not everything that is being produced. Air molecules
are not very tightly packed, which also makes the sound less intense.
With the yarn most of the wave is being sent right to your sound receptors, making it
more distinct and louder.

Have your child try the other spoon. How do the sounds compare? Try different
lengths of string. What does that do to the sounds?

Want to make more music? Here are 5 easy DIY instruments to make at home!

How Do Echos Work?

How do echoes work? What makes you hear a sound a second and third time like that?

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You Need:
 1. 2 Paper Towel Tubes
2. Pie Pan

To Do:
Prop the pie pan up on a table so it is vertical. Take one paper towel tube and place it
on the table, angled a bit but aimed at the pie plate. Take the other paper towel and
have it angled the opposite way, also aimed at the pie plate.

Have your child put his ear to one of the tubes while you talk softly into the other. You
can hear what is said through the other tube!

The sound waves you create by speaking travel through the tube. They are directed
through the tubes, hit the pie plate, and bounce off, traveling back through the other
tube. You are hearing the echo.

An echo is when a sound wave bounces off of a surface. Some surfaces are better for
echoes than others. For example, bathrooms are often very good at creating
echoes. This is because they are usually full of hard surfaces like tile that bounce back
sound waves effectively. A fun bath time activity is to explore your echo with your child.