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In this activity, learners explore how musical instruments are engineered.

Learners design and create musical instruments from common objects; their challenge is to create an instrument that can make three different tones.

In this activity, learners will create their own percussion instrument with recycled materials. Learners will explore design, fabrication, cause and effect and sound through this activity.

In this activity, learners create a traditional Mexican noisemaker (a matraca) using cardboard, craft sticks, and a wooden dowel.

With a bit of PVC, a laser, a can/cup, and a small mirror, you can make a device that visualizes you voice or any sound transmitted into the cup/can.

This is a web page that helps informal educators brainstorm on how to use a Pico Cricket (tiny computer) in an informal activity.

In this activity, learners construct wands that play different notes depending on information from light sensors programmed via a PICO Cricket.

In this activity/demo about piezoelectricity, learners discover how some crystals produce electricity when squeezed.

Learners build a simple electromagnet, then use this electromagnet to transform a yogurt container into a working speaker. They can connect their speaker to a radio and listen as it transmits sound.

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.

Learners explore soybeans, soak them in water to remove their coat, and then split them open to look inside. They also make a musical shaker out of paper cups, a cardboard tube, and soybeans.

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.

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

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.

From this How To slide show, you create an Audio Tape Bow that can play distorted audio sounds by running it across a tape head.

In this design challenge activity, learners add headphones to a previously built instrument (see "Build a Band" activity) to make it easier to hear.

In this activity, learners will listen to as many radio stations as possible to discover that AM radio signals can travel many hundreds of miles at night.