Exploring Music and Science with a Wind Organ

I love recycled crafts especially those that cover multiple areas of study. These recycled wind organs cover music, art, and science. It took us a while to collect up enough plastic bottles because we are not big plastic users, but we finally gathered enough plastic to make this cool wind organ.

A wind organ will make music when the wind blows. Our wind organ did not make a loud sound, but you could hear it if you were standing about 1-2 feet away from the organ which was a nice treat when we were working in the garden.

We used alcohol based markers (Sharpie®) to decorate the bottles. The marker seems to be holding up well even after getting wet.

You can use these wind organs for some science exploration for your children. Some questions to ask them as they blow into individual bottles:

1.       Which bottles make a high pitch sound?

2.       Which bottles make a low pitch sound?

3.       What do you notice about the holes of the bottles with a low pitch sound?

4.       What do you notice about the holes of the bottles with a high pitch sound?

We ended up with a nice discussion on how our simple wind organ works vs  a pipe organ.

For more information on a how a pipe organ works, please visit Pipedreams® website. 

For more information on wind organs including sound files from different wind organs please visit Pastorgan. 

Materials inspired by Plastorgan

Assorted plastic bottles

Knife

Scissors

Sharpie® markers

Twine or string

Directions

1.       Have an adult cut a skinny rectangle up the side of a bottle. I did this by inserting the knife in the bottle, then using scissors to cut the rest of the rectangle. You can cut different sized rectangles with varying heights but keep the width at the top and bottom the same to make the science questions are easier to understand for little children.

2.       Color designs on the bottles with the markers.

3.       Tie the bottles to a pole using twine. I found the easiest way to tie the bottles is to tie a loop around the neck of the bottle then tie another loop around the pole that you are attaching the wind organ to.

Posted on Simple Lives Thursday

Microscope pictures of sea shells from Lake Michigan

Last week we visited Lake Michigan, so Little BBQ picked up a few tiny sea shells at the beach that were perfect for looking at under his microscope. I have had a few questions lately about what type of microscope we use at home. We use a Bresser Junior Digital Hand Microscope that can be purchased at Toys R Us. The microscope has terrible reviews on-line, but we have been very happy with the microscope. The microscope takes pictures at either 20x or 200x zoom. There is no eye piece to look through to focus the image because the image shows up on your computer screen making it much easier for a parent to teach a child how to focus a microscope. There are multiple light settings including white, red (Little BBQ's favorite), and red and white together. To capture an image you just click the blue button on top of the microscope. From there you can save the image to your computer. Little BBQ has found the microscope very easy to use. We use windows, and we have had no problems loading or using the software. For less than $20 I consider this microscope a steal.

Here are some images of his sea shells:

Taken at 20x magnification:

Taken at 200x magnification:

More shells:

Little BBQ's favorite setting with the red light: