- Aerated Water
- Air Engine
- Air Table
- Are you Hot or Not?
- Balancing Act
- Bending Beams
- Block the gap
- Braille
- Bridge the Gap
- Chalk Wall
- Changing Faces
- Chaotic Motion
- Circle of Discovery
- Circle of Discovery- The Internet
- Circle of Discovery-Bridge Design
- Circle of Discovery-Ideas hub
- Circle of Discovery-Internet
- Circle of Discovery-Medicine
- Circle of Discovery-photography
- Circle of Discovery: Design - Earthquake
- Circulation
- Colour Wheel
- Communication Codes
- Communication Dishes
- Computer
- Crystallography
- Digestive System
- Down the Drain
- Electromagnetic Spectrum
- Fibre Optics
- Flight Simulator
- Gear Table
- Handshake Mirror
- Harmonograph
- High Flyer
- Hit the Target
- Horizontal Periscope
- Human Battery
- It's Electric
- Larger Than Life
- Lift Me Pull You
- Light Table
- Lock Box
- Making Waves
- Mini Harmonograph
- Mobile Phone
- Move It
- Nervous System
- Newtons Cradle
- Organ Pipe
- Organ Pipe Tune
- Oscillating Pendulums
- Pendulums
- People Power
- Periscope
- Prove Pythagoras
- Radar
- Radio Station
- Reactable
- Reflection Refraction
- Robot Arm
- Science of Sport
- Sensation
- Simple Camera
- Simple Circuits
- Smoke Tunnel
- Solar Energy
- Sound Waves
- Structures and Stresses
- Telescope
- The Exhibition
- The Eye
- The Lung and Chest Cavity
- The Wheel Race
- Thermal Imager
- Tornado
- Tower of Hanoi
- Universe Wall
- Up and Down
- Vertical Periscope
- Viscosity
- Viscosity Plungers
- Volume and Mass
- Vortex
- Watch Your Waste
- Weight Lifter
- Wheels Within Wheels
- Wind Tunnel
Communication Dishes
Using the Communication Dishes you can hear a whisper from across the room
Activity.... Do - Think - Learn
Sound travels through the air. It can bounce (be reflected) from different surfaces. A dish shape (parabola) can direct and collect sound (and other waves).
Can you and your friend talk to each other across the exhibition?
Stand in front of the dish. Speak quietly towards the centre. Listen carefully for your friends reply.
Can you hear them?
How does the sound travel across the exhibition?
What part of the ear collects sound?
The Science Bit
The dishes are in a shape of a parabola. The shape of the parabola means that if you stand at the focal point of the dish sound waves from your voice are reflected by the dish and are directed in a parallel beam towards the other dish which then reflects the sound waves towards the listener's ear.
Curriculum links
Ourselves
- That we have five senses which allow us to find out about the world
Sound and Hearing
- To explore sounds using their sense of hearing
- To make observations of sounds by listening carefully
- That we hear with our ears
- That some sounds can be heard from a long distance
- That there are many ways of describing sounds
Changing Sounds
- That vibrations from sound sources travel through different materials to the ear
Last Modified: 25/07/2011
