Things you'll need to decide on as you plan: Quantifying and Using Sound
Teaching Guidance for 11-14
Bringing together two sets of constraints
Focusing on the learners:
Distinguishing–eliciting–connecting. How to:
- keep amplitude and frequency separate, each with their own vocabulary
- separate the to and fro movement of the particles that forms the vibration from the propagation of the vibration, which is also a movement
- explore the range of hearing, along both the amplitude and frequency axes
- connect human hearing to what other species can hear
- ensure that the need for particles as a medium is always there
- link each sound heard back to the source, via the medium
Teacher Tip: These are all related to findings about children's ideas from research. The teaching activities will provide some suggestions. So will colleagues, near and far.
Focusing on the physics:
Representing–noticing–recording. How to:
- reinforce the source–medium–detector model
- represent the vibrations of the source
- represent the vibrations in the medium
- represent the vibrations of the detector
- account for reductions in intensity with distance from the source
- link delays in hearing sounds to the trip time of propagation from the source
- show sounds travelling through solids and liquids, as well as gases
- measure the frequency of a sound
- measure the amplitude of a sound
Teacher Tip: Connecting what is experienced with what is written and drawn is essential to making sense of the connections between the theoretical world of physics and the lived-in world of the children. Don't forget to exemplify this action.