The Beauty of Sound Through Science

There you are sitting in your car and your favorite song comes on. Maybe you are outside enjoying your morning coffee listening to the bird’s chirp. That my friend is The Beauty of Sound Through Science.

No matter where you are or what you are doing, there is sound going on around you at all times. Isn’t it amazing to think that sound truly starts with science? My family and I recently took a challenge to explore the world of sound using science and the outcome was amazing! I encourage you to keep reading to see how you can do the same with your own family.

The Beauty of Sound Through Science

Understanding Sound

In my personal opinion, you have to understand something before you can really appreciate it. So what exactly is sound made of?

By definition sound is: Vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person’s or animal’s ear.

Each sound gives off a certain frequency some we can hear while others we cannot. Our ears vibrate in a similar way to the original source of the vibration (sound), allowing us to hear many different sounds. However, dogs can hear sound at a higher frequency than humans, allowing them to hear noises that we can’t.

Create Sound Like No Other

Now that we know a bit about sound, wouldn’t it make sense to create it? We surely thought so which is why we are sharing the BOSEbuild Speaker Cube with you today.

Science makes just about everything possible including the ability to build your own speaker to amplify sound. The BOSEbuild Speaker Cube allows you and your child to explore science and creativity while building your own customized speaker cube. The appearance and sound is customized to fit your liking which also makes this process interesting and fun.

When you open the box you are presented with several different pieces. The idea is that you get to learn step-by-step on how to Build-it-yourself. You will also need to download the BOSEbuild Sound App. It’s a free app that walks you through the steps and allows you to customize your new BOSE speaker. We downloaded it straight to our iPad and it was very simple to use.

After you get through the first set of prompts, you get to learn about how a magnet and a coil make sound. You learn the difference of what types of metals are magnetic and what aren’t. This was fun finding different metals in our home to test on the magnet.

After playing around with sound a bit, you come to the point where you get to assemble what is basically a “tester” speaker. You get to test out different sounds (music) and frequencies to see how it reacts. Here is a short video I filmed of it.

Isn’t that cool? It really is just a few pieces too that produces so much motion! We even taped it to the box and you could literally hear music coming through it. Although, the sound wasn’t very loud, we were all shocked that this was all it took to make us hear the song!

But wait, all the fun still isn’t over! The next few steps of the app actually walk you through building a paper speaker (the template is provided in the box) and that helps amplify that sound even further! We chose to listen to Adele’s “Hello” and it sounded really cool coming from such a tiny device.

At this point, we were into this project for about an hour. We learned a lot about sound, the way it worked, and played around with different frequencies. Speaking of which, on some of the frequencies we noticed we could not hear but our puppy Drogo would sit right up every time we went right around that frequency change. Certainly seems like he could hear it!

So after all we learned, it was finally time to build and customize our BOSEbuild Speaker Cube. After kids explore the mechanics of sound, they can build and personalize their very own durable speaker with a choice of LED lights, silhouette covers and clip arrangements. We followed each step and we loved the final outcome of the speaker our son built:

If you haven’t done any science with your kids yet this summer, I encourage you to. I also encourage you to get your very own BOSEbuild Speaker Cube and discover your own sound.

You can find the BOSEbuild Speaker Cube available for pre-order at build.bose.com for $149 (suggested age is 8+). It truly provides a journey through the science of sound from magnets to music. From discovery and exploration of the very building blocks of sound to building and customizing their own Speaker Cube, kids will enjoy a high-performance Bluetooth speaker for years to come.

What are some fun ways you encourage creativity and discovery?