What’s plastic, very annoying and heard at football matches?
Nope, not a CD of the latest repetitive football anthem but the vuvezela – a plastic horn that gets blown by South African football fans at matches. This instrument/weapon of torture is fast becoming one of the most talked about subjects in this year’s World Cup.
The reason for the scientific interest is that it can be loud – very loud. A survey by hearing aid manufacturer Phonak said that tests have measured the noise of a vuvezela to be the equivalent of 127 decibels. And that is just one – imagine the din from a stadium full of them.
This could be a great context to a KS3 lesson on noise and hearing loss.
We know that sounds louder than 80 decibels are considered potentially dangerous. How much damage done to the ear depends on how loud the sound is and how long the exposure. The very loud noise from a vuvezela (which at 127dB, is about the same as an air-raid siren) can permanently damage your hearing after about 7 minutes of exposure. I’m guessing this risk increases if you are surrounded by the things and as a match lasts for at least 90 minutes attending one is not something that your ears are going to be thanking you for.
The PowerPoint I have written contains a starter which engages the students’ interest by showing a picture of a vuvezela and asking them why it is not good for their ears. The next slide contains an activity that asks them to place sounds like a jet engine in the correct place along a decibel scale. After revealing the answers, they are then asked about the vuvezela – just how loud is it?
The final slide explains why loud sounds are dangerous and asks what advice they would give fans who are attending the matches at the World Cup – using ear plugs might be a sensible approach!
Interesting article on the vuvuzela: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19041-what-makes-the-sound-of-vuvlezlas-so-annoying.html
This goes into detail about how they make their sound, why they are so loud and why the noise is so annoying.
Last term our school, (special needs), held a cross curricular world cup day. I covered the music/literacy lesson – with the vuvuzela’s taking centre stage – of course.
I shall be teaching sound this term. The powerpoint is a great starter to relate the pupils world cup experience to science.
Thanks.
Isn’t it strange that children love very loud, extremely annoying objects? (not!!). Thanks a lot for the comment. It’s great the hear that you will be using the resource in the classroom – please report back and let me know how it went down.
Another noisy toy that you can use in a lesson and get the students to explain how it works is the whirling sound tube which you can buy from lots of toy shops in the UK.
Gemma
Used this as an addition to my lesson on making musical instruments and managed to make a junk box orchestra, much to the annoyance of the class next door :)
Kids loved it. Thanks for a nice addition to one of my favourite lessons.
Thanks for the comment and I’m glad you found the resource useful.
I also used to spend a lesson like yours getting my year 8s to make musical instruments. I used to divide them up into pairs and some had to create wind instruments, some string and some percussion using the bits and pieces our technician collected all year. After a very noisy demonstration we used to discuss how they could change the amplitude and frequency of the sounds they produced (my attempt to make sure some science was in there!).
We recorded some of our instruments using audacity and a humble computerer mic. So we got to view the waves too. Very cool, free and instant way of giving visual feedback.
Great idea! (Much better than my low-tech attempt).
Audacity is a great free piece of software. I often use it to record audio for projects I work on.
I guess you could also use an oscilloscope to do the same thing.