📯 Paper ear trumpets and sound: the whole packet

📯 Paper ear trumpets and sound · 1st–5th grade · 1 day of testing · free · 40 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change how big the paper cone is, then how far away you can still hear the ticking will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

3 levels × 3 tries at each = 9 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🟨 Construction paper: black, white, red, blue and yellow: 2 sheets
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer: a kitchen timer that ticks, or a clock that ticks
• 📏 A tape measure, or a long ruler
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines: for the cones and the floor
• 🩹 Tape
• ✂️ Kid scissors

Be safe: ✅ Nothing sharp, hot or small

1. Roll one sheet into a small cone and a big sheet into a big cone, and tape them.
2. Snip the tip of each cone so it has a small hole at the narrow end.
3. Put the ticking timer on a table at one end of a quiet room.
4. With no cone, step back until you can't hear it, and put a tape mark at your toes.
5. Hold the narrow end of the small cone near your ear, never inside it.
6. Point the wide end at the timer and step back until you can't hear it.
7. Measure each mark from the timer. Do every one three times.
8. Test the big cone three times the same way.
9. Draw a bar for each one. Which helped you hear from farthest away?

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Cone   I measured: how far away you can still hear the ticking (cm)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: cone along the bottom, cm up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: point each cone straight at the timer and off to one side, and measure both.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does a bigger paper cone help you hear a quiet sound from farther away?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how big the paper cone is would change how far away you can still hear the ticking, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how big the paper cone is (No cone, Small cone, Big cone) and measured how far away you can still hear the ticking in cm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same ticking timer in the same place and the same listener the same, so only how big the paper cone is was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 3 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: No cone and Big cone gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: point each cone straight at the timer and off to one side, and measure both.