Grade level
Planning and carrying out investigations
Patterns
Cause and Effect
Energy and Matter
PS4.A: Wave Properties
Students use simple materials – including a speaker, plastic wrap, rubber bands, and rice — to investigate sound by seeing the effects of a speaker producing sound. Students play different sounds through the speaker, and record their observations for the effect on the rice particles for the different sounds. The artifacts include several samples of graphic organizers for these observations, as well as one classroom video of the investigation itself.
Across the samples, students note that increasing the sound volume makes the rice particles move or ‘jump’ more. They also circle correctly the relationship between the speaker volume and supplied energy.
Artifacts A and B, in particular, use the word “vibrate” to describe the motion caused by the sound, building upon a key idea in the Grade 1 standards. Whereas Artifact A represents these vibrations radiating in all directions, Artifact B represents the sound using crescent shapes directed upward. While Artifacts C and E do not use the word “vibration,” these students do observe a repeated motion saying that the rice is “spinning around” and “over and over again.”
Artifact D is intriguing, given the connection that this student makes between volume and frequency. It is worth considering whether the student intends frequency in the technical sense of a “wave frequency;” instead, the student may be using it as a word to describe the speed or height of the bounce (“the salt jumping very low”).
