This unit launches with a slow-motion video of a speaker as it plays music. In the previous unit, students developed a model of sound. This unit allows students to investigate the cause of a speaker’s vibration in addition to the effect.

Students dissect speakers to explore the inner workings, and engineer homemade cup speakers to manipulate the parts of the speaker. They identify that most speakers have the same parts–a magnet, a coil of wire, and a membrane. Students investigate each of these parts to figure out how they work together in the speaker system. Along the way, students manipulate the components (e.g. changing the strength of the magnet, number of coils, direction of current) to see how this technology can be modified and applied to a variety of contexts, like MagLev trains, junkyard magnets, and electric motors.

The course Bio-Inspired Design gives an overview of non-conventional mechanical approaches in nature and shows how this knowledge can lead to more creativity in mechanical design and to better (simpler, smaller, more robust) solutions than with conventional technology. The course discusses a large number of biological organisms with smart constructions, unusual mechanisms or clever sensing and processing methods and presents a number of technical examples and designs of bio-inspired instruments and machines.

In this lesson, students learn that sound is energy and has the ability to do work. Students discover that sound is produced by a vibration and they observe soundwaves and how they travel through mediums. They understand that sound can be absorbed, reflected or transmitted. Through associated activities, videos and a PowerPoint presentation led by the teacher, students further their exploration of sound through discussions in order to build background knowledge.

Students learn to apply the principles and concepts associated with energy and the transfer of energy in an engineering context by designing and making musical instruments. They choose from a variety of provided supplies to make instruments capable of producing three different tones. After completing their designs, students explain the energy transfer mechanism in detail and describe how they could make their instruments better.

This six-day lesson provides students with an introduction to the importance of energy in their lives and the need to consider how and why we consume the energy we do. The lesson includes activities to engage students in general energy issues, including playing an award-winning Energy Choices board game, and an optional graphing activity that provides experience with MS Excel graphing and perspectives on how we use energy and how much energy we use.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"A new, fully automated approach could help spot faulty electric motors before they leave the production floor. Based on a popular machine-learning algorithm known as an autoencoder, this technique could prove invaluable to the numerous industries that produce electric motors, as well as those that rely on them. An autoencoder is an algorithm that distills, or encodes, input data down to a few key elements. It then decodes that information to reproduce the original data as closely as possible. At first glance, it might look like a simple cut-and-paste operation. But there’s more than meets the eye. The algorithm actually learns to pick out patterns that are fundamental to the structure of the original data set. For that reason, the tool is incredibly useful for cleaning up noisy data. Trained on a sufficiently large data set, an autoencoder can look at a muddled image and output a fair restoration. That ability, it turns out, is also valuable for telling a good electric motor from a bad one..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

In this video adapted from the Encyclopedia of Physics Demonstrations, learn how a glass beaker vibrates at a specific frequency and how resonance can force it to shatter.

This sequence of instruction was developed to help elementary teachers who are working remotely.  We developed a short storyline that ties together a few sessions to help explore a specific concept.  We tried to include some activities that honored and included the student’s family and experience, and some that included the potential for ELA learning goals.
"Good Vibrations" is designed around students making observations of sounds and the way sounds are transmitted to answer the questions: How can improve the design of a string telephone?(How does sound behave in and between different materials?)
It is part of Clime Time - a collaboration among all nine Educational Service Districts (ESDs) in Washington and many Community Partners to provide programs for science teacher training around Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and climate science, thanks to grant money made available to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) by Governor Inslee. 

Awarded the NGSS Design Badge

After completing this unit, students will never look at an ambulance or police car the same way again. The anchoring phenomenon for this unit is “Emergency sirens make loud sounds.” This unit would be part of a Physical Science unit on Sound and Light. In this unit, students identify that sounds cause vibrations and vibrations cause sound, and that sound is used to communicate over distance. While walking the playground, students observe the sounds that they hear around them. They then conduct investigations into how sound is made and explore the cause and effect relationship between sounds and vibrations. Students will also design devices that use sound to communicate over a distance.

This resource was created by Kayla Henery, in collaboration with Lynn Bowder, as part of ESU2's Mastering the Arts project. This project is a four year initiative focused on integrating arts into the core curriculum through teacher education and experiential learning.

This course provides Mechanical Engineering students with an awareness of various responses exhibited by solid engineering materials when subjected to mechanical and thermal loadings; an introduction to the physical mechanisms associated with design-limiting behavior of engineering materials, especially stiffness, strength, toughness, and durability; an understanding of basic mechanical properties of engineering materials, testing procedures used to quantify these properties, and ways in which these properties characterize material response; quantitative skills to deal with materials-limiting problems in engineering design; and a basis for materials selection in mechanical design.

This is a PBL project that had students use musical instruments to demonstrate their mastery of waves and vibration. It was specifically designed to help students increase their depth of knowledge of vibration, wave fundamentals, wave interference, light and sound waves, and wave boundary effects. The project required students to use actual instruments to authentically present and justify their level of mastery to local musicians and other experts. Note that the project was designed and delivered per the North Carolina honors Physics curriculum and it can be customized to meet your own specific curriculum needs and resources.

To further their understanding of sound energy, students identify the different pitches and frequencies created by a vibrating ruler and a straw kazoo. They create high- and low-pitch sound waves.

This course presents principles of naval architecture, ship geometry, hydrostatics, calculation and drawing of curves of form, intact and damage stability, hull structure strength calculations and ship resistance. It introduces computer-aided naval ship design and analysis tools. Projects include analysis of ship lines drawings, calculation of ship hydrostatic characteristics, analysis of intact and damaged stability, ship model testing, and hull structure strength calculations.

Students examine the existence of sound by listening to and seeing sound waves while conducting a set of simple activities as a class or in pairs at stations. Students describe sound in terms of its pitch, volume and frequency. They use this knowledge to discuss how engineers study sound waves to help people who cannot hear or talk.

Music can loosely be defined as organized sound. The lesson objectives, understanding sound is a form of energy, understanding pitch, understanding sound traveling through a medium, and being able to separate music from sound, can provide a good knowledge base as to how sound, math, and music are related. Sound exists everywhere in the world; typically objects cause waves of pressure in the air which are perceived by people as sound. Among the sounds that exist in everyday life, a few of them produce a definite pitch. For example, blowing air over half full glass bottles, tapping a glass with a spoon, and tapping long steel rods against a hard surface all produce a definite pitch because a certain component of the object vibrates in a periodic fashion. The pitch produced by an object can be changed by the length or the volume of the portion that vibrates. For example, by gradually filling a bottle while blowing across the top, higher pitches can be generated. By organizing a few of these sounds with a clearer pitch, the sounds become closer to music. The very first musical instruments involved using various objects (e.g. bells) that have different pitches, which are played in sequence. The organization of the pitches is what transforms sounds into music. Since the first instruments, the ability to control pitch has greatly improved as illustrated by more modern instruments such as guitars, violins, pianos, and more. Music is comprised of organized sound, which is made of specific frequencies. This lesson will help define and elaborate on the connections between sound and music.

Music and sound are two different concepts that share much in common. Determining the difference between the two can sometimes be difficult due to the subjective nature of deciding what is or is not music. The goal of this activity is to take something constructed by students, that would be normally classified as just sound and have the class work together to make what can be perceived to be music. Students construct basic stringed instruments made of shoeboxes and rubber bands. This activity aims to increase student understanding of what distinguishes music from sound.

Students explore how sound waves move through liquids, solids and gases in a series of simple sound energy experiments. Understanding the properties of sound and how sound waves travel helps engineers determine the best room shape and construction materials when designing sound recording studios, classrooms, libraries, concert halls and theatres.

This video segment presents a variety of sounds -- from animals to machines to musical instruments -- while introducing the basic concepts of vibration, volume, and pitch.