Which material is

best for muffling

sound?

Professor Big-Hair and Professor Bee-Hive have a problem.

They can’t do any work because their alarm clock is

constantly ringing and the off switch is broken.

Professor Big-hair thinks if they wrap it in a sheet, they can

muffle the sound so they won’t be able to hear it.

Professor Beehive thinks they should do an experiment with

different materials, to see which one will muffle the sound

best.

She says they should wrap the alarm clock in each of the

materials, and see if they can still hear it ringing.

Which material do you think will be

good at muffling the sound?

Fill in the gaps in these sentences about the experiment.

Choose the right words from the boxes at the bottom.

The professors should wrap the _______________ in

each ___________ they are testing. They should

make sure they use ________________ number of

layers of each material, and they leave

______________ gaps when they wrap up the alarm

clock.

When you do an experiment, it’s important to

make sure that it’s a fair test.

Doing a ‘fair test’ means doing an

experiment where you only change

_______________. To test which material

muffles sound best, you must only

change the _______________. Each time,

you have to make sure you use the

______________ number of layers. You

also need to measure how

______________ it is in the same way. If

you changed the material and changed

the number of layers as well, you

__________ know if the result was

because of the material or the number

of layer.

always

same

wouldsound

weathertwo things

material

different

your socks

one thing

wouldn’tloud

hear

Which materials are we going to use?

Materials we are going to use in this

investigation are:

• Newpaper

• Bubble wrap

• Fabric

Which material do you predict to be the

best at muffling sound?

• Foil

•USE ANY

MATERIALS YOU

HAVE AVAILABLE!

Method

What are we going to do?

How are we going to do it?

What will we need to keep the

same or change?

Results

Material Distance (number of steps)

No Wrapping

Fabric

Bubble Wrap

Foil

Which material was best at

muffling sound?

Remember the quieter it made

the sound, the better it was at

muffling sound.

Conclusion