Investigating Sound

Science is an important topic in our urban world as we are surrounded by technology based on the ways that physics, chemistry, biology and all other sciences work. Textbooks are necessary, of course, as are other books that cover the same topics in different ways. The “Investigating Science Challenges” series of books wisely limits itself to the area of physics, what most people think of as science, presenting the material with the key information in small pieces and lots of pictures. Each book has three “Let’s Investigate” sections, an experiment related to the topic using easily available materials and demonstrating a concept given in the text.

Richard Spilsbury has taken on a series of concepts that most people struggle with and has presented them clearly and briefly. He has successfully included both interesting real world facts and definitions on many of the pages and also includes related and exciting photographs. It is great to see a wide variety of young people showing how to do the experiments and illustrating the points of the text. Some of the people appear in more than one book giving more sense of continuity.

It is encouraging that, in addition to the glossary, references and index, there are tips for doing the experiments included at the back of the book. Once readers have used one of the books, they will know what to expect in the others.

Investigating Sound has the perfect cover! A guitar in the background and the second experiment performed with different elastics to create vibrations at different tones. Music is an excellent way to approach sound for young people. Other examples used in the text are whales, astronauts in space, kittens and lions and ultrasound. So both the topic is interesting and the author has chosen well to illustrate the important themes involved.

Investigating Sound is an enticing combination of ideas and experiments well-designed to interest students in learning more about sound in a scientific way.

The “Investigating Science Challenges” seems to be designed to fill specific curriculum requirements in both science and in research methods. If this is the case, the series is a success as it contains numerous ways to draw students into the topics and experiments that are easy enough for young people to perform while getting a more practical understanding of how science works. A budding scientist or engineer will be particularly attracted to these ideas and to the method of presentation.