Science in the Library

Monday's hands-on science program, "The Science Behind Recording Music," challenged tweens to come up with several iterations of a gramophone that could play the sound stored on a vinyl record with only their hands to power it. First, tweens learned about the history of sound recording and its great inventors, from Leon Scott to Alexander Graham Bell, to Edison to Berliner. I engaged the kids in some fun questions to test their critical thinking skills, like: "How many grooves are on each side of a record?" and "How many times a second would a record turn if it's turning at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute?" Here are my slides from that presentation: Science of Recorded Music from AnnMarie Ppl And here is the video I created to give them a sample of what they would be doing: Then we started spinning records of our own. We made a gramophone out of a tin can, aluminum foil, and a pin, and lowered the pointy end of the pin onto the...

We recently had a few STEAM-related programs at the library that I wanted to share on here. The first was called "Tablets and Tech for Kids," and we were using the library's iPads and robots to learn coding, as well as using the library's iPads and Osmo game systems to complete physics and geometry challenges. Then we had another program about making musical instruments, which encouraged kids to try to experiment and find ways to design their instruments to play better. Kids and parents struggled to make great drums with very taut balloon membranes. Children also tried to make their rubber-band guitar strings more taut, and played with different kinds of rubber bands to get the design they wanted.

This afternoon we had a program at Pasadena Library about how to make a musical instrument--something that would produce not just noise, but definite pitches that you could change or manipulate.  We learned about aerophones, chordophones, idiophones and membranophones, and then got a chance to make our own DIY instruments. Here was my setup: Not shown: a large container of water, which we needed for some of the instruments. First, we talked about the properties of sound and experimented with a "head harp," which is made by putting a string through a wire hanger and holding both ends up to your ears to hear what sounds it made when we let the hanger hit the wall.  Without the strings being close to your ears, all you hear is a faint click, but when the strings are held up to your ears it sounds like a gong or a church bell.  This helped to convey a lesson about how much faster and better sound moves through solids than through air. After some mo...

This is from the book Howtoons: Tools of Mass Construction by Saul Griffith, published by Image Comics. It tells you how you can make a flute from a turkey baster, just by filling the baster halfway with water and then squeezing the baster so that the water rises and makes different pitches. It's similar to many other ideas involving wine glasses and other things, but I just had never heard of using a baster before! And what's nice about the baster is you can actually manipulate it like an instrument. Different water levels will resonate at different frequencies. Maybe I'll do this with my library for my Science of Music program this summer!