Featured

Main Information

Grade level

4th grade

artifact category

Demo or Simulation

Storyline chapter

Chapter 4

scientific practices

Analyzing and interpreting data

crosscutting concepts

Patterns

Cause and Effect

Energy and Matter

disciplinary core ideas

PS4.A: Wave Properties

PS4.C: Information Technologies and Instrumentation

Artifact Description

Using an online sound graphing tool, students record different sounds and observe the patterns that these sounds create when displayed on a graph with time on the x-axis and amplitude on the y-axis. Students then recorded what the graphical representation looked like for a humming sound versus a screaming sound.

Student Thinking

The three artifacts include drawings of the graphical representation that show a clear difference between a humming sound (“spread out,” “lower sound,” “low amplitude,” “soft”) and a screaming sound (“pointy like a mountain,” “closer and spikier,” “high amplitude,” “hard”).

While Artifacts B and C include the vocabulary words “amplitude” and “wavelength,” these artifacts do not show evidence of a correspondence between the word, what it indicates about the graphical representation, and what characteristic of the sound it describes.

It is possible that there is confusion between “high” and “low”, to mean both volume (and therefore related to amplitude) and pitch (and therefore related to wavelength). Humming is “low” volume, but also “low” pitch.

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6. Sound Grapher Simulation

Main Information

Artifact Description

Student Thinking

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