Hoodie Hearing

Hoodie Hearing Organiser’s Card About the activity This activity is designed to get children investigating how sounds travels. After nearly colliding with a student wearing a hoodie, Mrs Teachem thinks that wearing a hoodie may affect the wearer’s hearing. Is she right? Can the investigators find out? Through this activity you will support your group to: • Investigate if wearing things over your ears affects sound • Experiment with sound through a range of different materials • Record and present their results Kit list Ear coverings: • Hooded jackets • selection of other ear coverings e.g. bobble hats, ear muffs, scarves, motorbike helmet etc. Or pieces of different materials such as wool, cotton and bubble wrap. Hold these over the ears with a headband or fasten with a wrapped ribbon • Selection of things to make noise with e.g. buzzer, timer, radio (radios can be useful as the volume can be controlled) • Sound sensors (optional) What to do 1. Introduce the activity using the story. Ask them to discuss sound and how it travels. 2. Give out activity cards and equipment to the children. Give children time to discuss their ideas. Do they wear hoodies or other coverings on their ears e.g. bobble hats, scarves, ear muffs? Do they think it stops them from hearing? 3. Explain that they will be designing experiments to find out which materials block sound. Let children try to decide how to test their ideas. materials in order. Alternatively they could try to carry out a fair test. 5. Encourage them to keep notes or draw pictures of objects to record what they are finding out. 6. Give the children time to present and share ideas about what they have found out. They could compare what each group has found. They may find that different people hear things differently. This would be interesting to talk about. 4. Children could simply explore the difference that ear coverings make, and try to put the

Things to think about Some materials are better sound insulators than others. Soft material tends to prevent sound passing through it easily. Air also acts as a good sound insulator. Increasing the number of layers of material normally increases the sound insulation. Direction also makes a difference. A person wearing a hoodie is more likely to hear a sound if it is coming from the front. In this activity, good sound insulators are worse in terms of safety. However, there may be times when people need good sound insulation to protect their ears e.g. when using noisy equipment. Keywords • Sound • Volume • Insulators • Materials Watch out! Do not let the children listen to loud noises close to their ears. Do not let children plug their ears with material. Do not let children share head coverings. British Science Association Registered Charity No. 212479 and SC039236