Tune Booster
Use things from around the home to give some smartphone speakers a big boost!
This activity may be Noisy
Use things from around the home to give some smartphone speakers a big boost!
This activity may be Noisy
1. Gather your supplies using the list above.
2. Play a song on your phone. Listen and note down how loud it sounds. Put your phone into the different cups and bowls and listen how the sound changes.
3. Try making a horn out of paper and attach it over the speaker of your phone. Does this boost the sound?
4. If you have a card box or tube, cut a hole for your phone to fit inside it. Does it make a good tune booster?
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Experiment with different shapes and materials.
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What happens if you create a booster made of two materials (e.g. paper and glass)?
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Can you design a muffler for the sound—something that will dampen the sound instead of amplifying it?
Sound is produced by anything that vibrates. The vibrations disturb the air around them, making the air vibrate too. The vibrations spread out in all directions as waves, and you hear the sound when they hit your eardrums.
The different boosters in the activity make the sound louder in two main ways. If the phone is touching the booster, then the booster vibrates too—and that disturbs more air, making more sound. Some boosters work by preventing the sound waves from spreading out, making them go in just one direction instead.
Loudspeakers are normally much bigger than the ones in your smartphone – so they disturb much more air. The vibrations are more energetic too, because they are driven by a powerful amplifier. The cabinet the speaker is housed in also vibrates, making more sound—and a hole at the front means that most of the sound travels out that way, so less sound is lost behind the speaker.
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