Day 97 - We Are Sound and Light Scientists! - Ms. Farmer - Francis Wyman Grade 1

This post first appeared on Ms. Farmer's Blog

Sound and Light Experiments in Room 111

Experiments on Sound

We did many experiments on how sound travels in waves using tuning forks, water and other materials. After much "science talk" (or discussion) we then documented our findings in our "Science Notebook" on our iPad -- by either writing and illustrating directly onto our iPad using the Bookcreator and Drawing Pad apps or by using pencil, paper, markers and crayons and then uploading a picture of what we had created onto a page in Bookcreator.  Either way it was fun to explore and explain what we had learned!  

The class began with a simple experiment of listening with their eyes closed and then classifying the sounds that they heard into categories of Human Sounds, Machine Sounds and Nature Sounds:

Eggs of Sound:

We then did an experiment called "Eggs of Sound."  In this experiment, we shook some plastic eggs filled with various materials and tried to determine what was inside of each egg:

TUNING FORKS

Here we are learning about vibrations by striking tuning forks against the hard surface of a table.  We then learned how sound travels in waves by hitting our tuning fork against the table and then placing it in water to see the waves that sound made in the water:

Upon completing our many experiments with tuning forks, the children then recorded their findings in their 2016-2017 Science Notebook.

The Dancing Salt Experiment

Next the children tried to hypothesize about what would happen to rice when they made noise.  Rice was placed onto plastic wrap which had been stretched over a bowl.  Children were then asked to gather around the bowl in groups and make loud sounds with their drums.  Although they had fun seeing the rice dance as they screamed, I think that they actually had more fun being given the permission to make loud noise inside of a classroom : )

Volume and Pitch 

We then experimented with volume and pitch by playing various instruments:

LIGHT EXPERIMENTS

We also learned about the concepts of light through many experiments and activities:

Light Detectives

We began our study of light by being "Light Detectives" -- finding the "sources" of light in our classroom:

What Produces Light?

After discovering the sources of our light in the classroom, we examined what exactly can produce light rather than reflect light.  First we made some hypothesis:

Reflecting

We then discussed what materials best reflect light, noting also that materials which reflect light are not considered sources of light.  The students made hypotheses on their clipboard and then we tested it:

Where does the light go?

We also tried to guess where the light would be seen when we aimed it toward various sources such as black paper, a mirror, aluminum foil, the dull side of a mirror, etc.  The children would point to where they thought that the light would shine and then we tested it by shining a flashlight on it.

Which materials does light go through?  

We experimented with this as well, making our hypothesis before testing:

Refracting Light

We then learned how light bends or refracts.  We used prisms and learned how rainbows are formed.

Here we are wearing our red goggles, trying to see which colors are most easily seen when we are wearing our goggles with red glass.  

We even deciphered secret messages by wearing our red goggles:

The experiments and learning were great fun! Ask your child about some of these experiments and what they learned! 

We now have chicks hatching from incubators in the classroom and we are learning about Persuasive Writing and Seasons.  

Stayed tuned for blogs about these units in the near future!