🥄 Spoon bells and sound: the whole packet

🥄 Spoon bells and sound · 2nd–6th grade · 1 day of testing · free · 30 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 spoon is, then how long you hear it ring 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

• 🥄 A spoon: 3 metal ones: a teaspoon, a big spoon and a serving spoon
• 🧵 String or yarn: about 1 metre
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer

Be safe: ✅ Nothing sharp, hot or small

1. Tie the teaspoon to the middle of the string, so both ends hang down the same.
2. Wrap one end round each pointing finger.
3. Press your fingertips gently against your ears, never inside them.
4. Lean over so the spoon swings and taps the edge of a table.
5. A grown-up starts the timer at the tap. Say stop when you can't hear the ring.
6. Write down the seconds, and do it two more times.
7. Tie on the big spoon, then the serving spoon, and test each one three times.
8. Draw a bar for each spoon. Which rang the longest?

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

I changed: Spoon   I measured: how long you hear it ring (seconds)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: spoon along the bottom, seconds 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: hang each spoon on yarn and on thin string, and see which carries the ring longer.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does a bigger spoon ring longer when it hangs on a string?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how big the spoon is would change how long you hear it ring, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how big the spoon is (Teaspoon, Big spoon, Serving spoon) and measured how long you hear it ring in seconds.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same string, the same length and the same tap on the same table edge the same, so only how big the spoon 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: Teaspoon and Serving spoon 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: hang each spoon on yarn and on thin string, and see which carries the ring longer.