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This activity requires a Pico Cricket (tiny computer). Learners work on designing and building a sound sensor out of household materials, like plastic wrap and cardboard.

In this activity, learners listen to songs and decode hidden messages based on the same principle as a modem. As a final challenge, learners decode the binary messages in a music video.

In this design challenge activity, learners build a four-stringed instrument that can play a tune.

Audio Boggle is an activity that lets you listen to a track (that you make yourself) and see what you can hear!

If you got a big graduated or clear cylinder, water, a pipe, and a tuning fork, you've got a sound learning opportunity! Learn about resonance with this Exploratorium Science Snack.

This is a perfect summertime lunch activity! Pico Cricket is required (micro controller). First, get a bunch of cut up fruit, line them up, then plug a piece of fruit with a Pico Cricket sensor clip.

Make a cuíca (“kwee-ka”), a traditional Brazilian musical instrument that originated in Africa. Played primarily in Brazil, now you can play it at home, too, with this Exploratorium produced activity.

In this activity, learners will build an instrument from common household items. Explore sound through vibrations created by your vocal chords and captured by an instrument.

Listen to the beat of gravity. By taking two strings with weights tied to them at different, yet uniform intervals, you can hear the uniformity (and rhythm) of gravity's accelerating pull.

Create an instrument that you don't play--you just listen to it through tubes of various lengths.

Oboes's unique sound originates from the two small reeds a musician blows into. Make your own double reed instrument out of straw!

We listen to stereo music systems, tv's, and radios because it simulates being where the sound originates.

Do you have an extra portable cassette tape player hanging around?

In this group activity, learners see and hear the speed of sound. A learner designated the "gonger" hits a gong, once every second, as the rest of the group watches and listens from a distance.

In this activity, learners create a straw oboe to explore sound and pitch.

In this activity, learners use a compact disc to make a spectrometer, an instrument used to measure properties of light.

Build a phonograph record player using a cactus needle, a record, LEGOs gear box, and a piece of paper! This activity uses a Pico Cricket to turn the motor.

Make your own simple speaker so you can listen to your favorite radio station. Just wind a coil, attach it to a piece of cardboard or Styrofoam, hold a magnet nearby, and listen.

This is a series of three quick science activities to do with a spoon, knife, and fork. In the first two activities, learners use the flatware to explore optics, mirrors, reflection, and distortion.

In this activity, learners explore how an electromagnet works by making a simple one. Using this knowledge, learners design a diagram to make a working speaker using household materials.