Pitch Perfect Water Piano from Julie on Vimeo.
Students in Ms. Taylor’s 5th grade class at Highland Spring Elementary have been learning all about sound. Today her students explored and researched different kinds of pitch and why different pitches occur.
One small group decided to make a water piano out of glasses, water and a MaKey-MaKey. We programmed different pitches to sound in Scratch when the water in each glass was tapped. Each glass contained a different amount of liquid.
Here is their Scratch creation (click the green flag and press one of the arrow keys or space bar)
As you can see in the video at the beginning of this post, the students had a blast figuring out which glass of water would have the highest pitch (the one with the least amount of water) and which glass had the lowest pitch (the one with the most amount of water). When the glasses are full, the vibrations have more water to travel through. This slows down the vibrations and creates a lower pitch. Lots of critical thinking and problem solving was involved but I don’t think these students will ever forget this concept. I know I won’t!
