So, we know that sounds can be of different pitches – right. But what is it that makes one sound be a different pitch to another sound?

Well, you’ve come to right place. Year 4 put on their scientific hats on and investigated this very question this week. Here’s our report.

What we did

We had three different instruments in the classroom: guitars, chime bars and the elastic band (ok, not a real musical instrument but .. ). We had time to explore the different sounds/pitch that  you could make on each instrument and observed the features of each instrument.

What we found

For the chime bars we found that the longer the chime bar, the lower the pitch. And, the shorter the chime bar, the higher the pitch. This made us think that the length of the instrument has something to do with the pitch it makes.

But when we played the guitar strings (that were all the same length) we noticed that it was the thickness of the string that made the difference to the pitch. The thicker the strings, the lower the sound. And, the thinner the string, the higher the sound.

When we played the ‘elastic band’ we noticed that the tighter you pulled the elastic band the higher the pitch was.

Conclusion

The pitch of a sound is affected by the thickness, the length and the tightness of that instrument.