Peaceful Panpipes

Having discovered last week that sound can be made by blowing into an object as air vibrates, we thought about different musical instruments that work in this way.
In our topic lesson this week, we embarked on the challenge of creating our own musical instrument. As a class, we looked at panpipes and thought about what resources we could use to create them.
We cut straws to different lengths so that different pitches of sound would be made. When cutting the straws, we used our measuring skills to ensure that the length of each straw decreased by the same amount each time.
Once we had arranged them in order of size and bound them together, we were ready to test them. We were impressed with the panpipes, as when we blew into them we could hear the difference between the low and high pitched sounds.
In the evaluation process, some of us suggested that the volume of the sound could have been improved had we used a different material, for example, bamboo.