Cornstarch Monsters – Science Experiment
Heading into week four, I’ve spoken with friends who are really missing the company of others, and I have spoken with friends who are under house arrest with their own family. How does the phrase go? “Fish and family – 3 days…?” Fortunately most of my acquaintances have – in the parlance of Marin County, “done their work,” and are now getting to “practice it.”
So to strengthen your “practice,” I offer of this week’s ‘stuff for kids to do with sound’ activities under the rubric of “Don’t tell your mom I showed you how to do this…” I’ll leave it to your discretion as to how much of this – if any, you want to share with the tykes.
My all-time favorite is the straw oboe. This is something you can actually use to make music (of sorts). The instructions are simple, but I think the holes are too far apart in the one illustrated in the link.
I recall buying a handful of straws from a Greenwich Village street vendor to share this with my young cousin’s pre-school class. Some of the kids could handle the scissors well enough, but I could also turn these our pretty fast for the ones that couldn’t. I’ll tell you this though; there is no sound quite like a room full of three and four-year-olds playing these things!
The paper banger is more of a boy thing, and is probably the simplest origami construction ever invented. Two versions here; one is more complicated, and not as loud, the second one is simpler and louder, but the music on the second video might drive you nuts.
And since we already have the scissors and paper out, we can turn out a paper razzer. The photos in this link are illustrated with instructions. The razzer is in the same sound quality department with the sounds you can make with a balloon, by stretching the neck of an inflated balloon to let the air razz out. A variation on this theme is to let it razz out into your open mouth, using your mouth as a resonator to articulate the vowels of this increasingly obnoxious sound.
And for a little science: What makes these sounds so obnoxious? We have been advancing a term “Kurtosis” which is actually a term used in statistics to explain variability in a set. The “set” variables we are using in describing sounds are how many different tones are in the sound. All sounds (except pure tones) are comprised of different tones. The differences between these tones determine the quality of the sound. Extreme differences in pitches or amplitudes in these tones tend to be more annoying – and a “higher” kurtosis.
And for a bit of Physics: This last experiment can get a bit messy, but takes advantage of the variable viscosity of corn starch, which is used as a thickener in cooking, and your mom might have some in the cupboard. Due to the fine particle size of corn starch, it behaves both like a solid, and a fluid, depending on how fast you try to move it.
This property can be playfully exploited in a number of ways. One of them is Cornstarch Monsters, which requires an audio speaker, a sheet of plastic, a tolerant parent, and music. This is cool.
Until next week, stay safe and be well!
