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HEARING

Sound is sensed by the ears. There are a lot of noises in the world, especially if you're living in a city. Our eardrums pick up these noises and try to make sense of them in the brain. We can often hear things that aren't there or not hear things that are there. Have you ever wondered whether there would be a sound if a tree fell in a forest with no one around to hear it? A lot of people have wondered about this. Some claim that if there were no eardrums to pick up the sound waves, the falling tree wouldn't make a sound. But, how could we actually test such a claim?

EXPERIMENT

Where is the Sound Coming From?

Put a blindfold on and sit on a chair in the middle of a room. You need three friends to gather sound makers that are the same, such as spoons. One will sound a set of spoons above your head, another will do the same in front of you, and the other will sound his set of spoons behind you. Try to have all sounds made at equal distance to the ear. If the sounds are made at the same time, you shouldn't be able to figure out where the sound is actually coming from. Be sure not to move your head during the experiment.

Test Your Hearing Abilities:

Make a tape recording of a person talking but change the volume while you're doing it. Start with very, very quietly and slowly increase to very, very loud. Have different people listen to the same tape and each explain what they heard. Now play the tape back at "normal" volume. How did you do? Were there certain times during the tape recording that it was especially difficult to hear?

You can modify this experiment a bit and have someone make a variety of noises in the background, where they can't be seen. Have everyone write down what they hear and compare the results with the actual sounds used. Here are a few examples to use:

RUNNING WATER POT CLANKING
BLENDER POPCORN POPPING
STATIC FROM THE TV SPOON MUSIC
DOOR SLAMMING DIFFERENT INSTRUMENTS

Also think of other things that each noise may sound like and guess some of the common mistakes that can be made by all of us, when hearing certain sounds.

EXPERIMENT

Have you ever held a seashell up to your ear and heard the ocean? You can even make this sound with a jar! Noise from our environment, including the noise your ear is making by brushing up against the jar, is what's making the sound. The sound is then reinforced by the vibration of air within the jar. This sound, called resonance, sounds a lot like the ocean.

MORE EXPERIMENTS & ACTIVITIES:

 

(click on each heading above for fun & experiments for each sense)