Light, sound and waves home experiments and simulations

A selection of home experiments and online simulations that are suitable to use with your students aged 11-14 (KS3) whilst educating remotely to support and develop their understanding of Light, Sound and Waves.

Light:

• Make a pinhole camera to investigate how light rays form an image (Pringles tubes make good ones - with a hole in the metal end, greaseproof under the plastic cap and foil removed).
• PhET Bending light can be used to explore refraction.
• Refraction and lenses (from The Physics Classroom) has a variety of simulations to investigate and model refraction.
• Marvin and Milo Reappearing Coin shows how refraction can be used for some optical illusions.
• Marvin and Milo Garden Rainbow explores the visible spectrum.
• Marvin and Milo Deceptive CD investigates colour mixing and the addition of colour.
• Marvin and Milo Eerie Blue Water - this shows how sunlight contains lots of different colours of light.

Sound:

• Soundmeter apps (The link provided takes students to a free download of a 'software oscilloscope' that uses a computer's sound card) can help students to learn about the effect of distance and insulating materials on amplitude. It can also be compared to Slink-o-scope to explain why a transverse graph is drawn to show displacement for a longitudinal sound wave.
• Dancing Sprinkles can be used to introduce the idea that sound is a vibration of the air.
• Marvin and Milo Musical Coathangers shows how volume is affected by the material the sound wave travels through (can also be done with roasting racks or by dropping a metal slinky with strings attached).
• Marvin and Milo Milk Bottle Orchestra explores how the amount of material that vibrates affects the sound produced (bonus points if you can get a selection of bottles together and play a tune!).
• Marvin and Milo Sound of Gas demonstrates how the speed and pitch of a sound produced is affected by the material it travels through.
• Measuring the speed of sound using echoes gives a method for students to do just that! This also helps to reinforce some of the key points used in speed/distance/time ultrasound calculations.
• Teaching Sound Waves pull-out (from Classroom Physics) puts a few sound experiments together and includes a student sheet to help summarise key points.

General/other Waves: 

• Soundmeter apps (The link provided takes students to a free download of a 'software oscilloscope' that uses a computer's sound card) can help students to learn about the effect of distance and insulating materials on amplitude. It can also be compared to Slink-o-scope to explain why a transverse graph is drawn to show displacement for a longitudinal sound wave. 
• PhET waves intro has three animations that link to water waves, sound and light and introduce the terms frequency and amplitude. 

Health and Safety Guidance:

These experiments have been selected by trained teachers as appropriate for use at home, but we have not specifically tested them for home use.

All experiments are carried out at your own risk.

To avoid risk of injury or damage, we recommend that you follow the instructions as shown, and that a responsible adult supervises all practical activity and considers the suitability of each task for their child.

Teachers proposing to recommend any resources to their students should:

1. work within safety policies established by their school;

2. use their professional judgement to assess the suitability of experiments for their own students;

3. direct students and their parents/guardians to follow all stated instructions.