Do You Hear That?

Challenge
March is National Music in Our Schools so this challenge will follow suit! Sound dampening materials are used in the music industry to produce high quality sound. Without these materials the sounds from outside or inside could mix together. Imagine listening to your favorite song, but there are birds chirping in the background since they were outside the recording studio that day! It probably would ruin the song. There is a need for sound proofing to create excellent recordings. What materials help reduce sounds? How much of the material is need? That’s where the challenge comes in. Your challenge is to construct a prototype room for dampening sound coming from a device. What will be the best materials to use? What already exists in the real world or your school that does this?

Your sound proofing room does have some criteria and constraints. Only the materials provided can be used in your design. Each groups’ room should be the same size. Testing the room should be placed over the same device emitting the sound. Or the device inside could be recording and sound coming from outside the room.

Materials

• poster board
• cardboard boxes
• cotton balls
• felt
• craft sticks
• foam pieces
• various fabric
• tape
• glue
• paper
• foil
• etc.
• device for playing sound
• device for decibel meter app (Decibel X)

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Hints and Tips for Success

1. Allow students planning and discussion time by having them experiment with the items to see how flexible, movable, and heavy they are. Also, let students test to see how the app or decibel meter works.
2. After experimenting, allow student groups to plan their design. Include as many ways to improve their prototype rooms as needed.
3. For differentiation, adjust the amount of materials available and allowed to use, add any additional materials, take away certain materials, show them different sound proofing rooms, amount of time in the room. Adjustments could be made to make it more challenging or simpler.
4. If using cardboard boxes of some sort, they should all be the same size with one side completely open. If using the poster board or other type of paper, create a cube net stencil that students can trace, cutout, fold, and tape to create an open box to represent their room. The unfolded net would work well for creating their room before folding it together.
5. Make sure to standardize procedure of testing the room. The app allows the user to record the data collected so students will be able to test it out and the amount of sound it is picking up either inside the room or outside of the room created.
6. The classroom will have to be as noise free as possible when testing since the meter will pick up all sounds. Ensure that the noise being played is at the same level for each room being tested.
7. Discuss with students the best way to conduct the activity and collect data.
8. Connect to science by discussing sound waves, properties of materials, absorption, reflection, refraction, etc.
9. Connect to ELA by reading How Sounds Move by Sharon Coan, Sounds All Around by Wendy Pfeffer, or Sound: Loud, Soft, High, and Low by Natalie Myra Rosinsky