Welcome To The WonderLab
The 6th Grade Xylophone Project
It’s 9:15 AM on a Tuesday in what once was the Falk computer lab. Eighteen sixth-graders are measuring, sawing, gluing, and hammering pieces of pine and oak to create xylophones. Groups of four or five students work together, taking turns hammering, usually with three people holding the boards and one person driving the nail. After the first nail is driven in, a little “Wooohoo” bubbles up. Same with the second and the third. By the fourth nail, the cheers have quieted and the students are down to business. “Next nail… ok… next nail (repeat).” While the excitement may be more subtle, the questions posed, the answers searched for, and the satisfaction of working with one’s hands are ever-present. Welcome to the WonderLab!
As Tim Wagner, one of our WonderLab instructors, says, “The joy in watching a student do something as “simple” as sawing a piece of wood, and the sense of accomplishment that a child feels when they learn is something amazing.”
Questions arise like eyes watching rockets soar. “What could we make the mallets from?” “How can we measure the angle of the box’s base?” “How much of the red oak should we cut for each bar?” And even, more broadly—“What is the best way for us to hammer pieces of wood together?” and “How can we ensure that we measure correctly?” and “How do we make a piece of wood sing?”
We chose xylophones in part because Falk’s 6th grade math classes are making xylophones out of pvc pipe and we thought we could use this as an opportunity for our 6th grade WonderLab class to explore making musical instruments completely out of wood. As for the pvc project, “The xylophone project came about from the confluence of spending some time over the summer meeting with local maker communities and an interesting episode of an amazing podcast called Surprisingly Awesome,” says Tim Kirchner, Falk middle school mathematics instructor. “The episode talked about frequency relationships between notes and how the simpler the relationship was, the more our brains tended to enjoy it. Simple fraction relationships fit perfectly with the start of the 6th grade [mathematics] curriculum and I was excited about the opportunity to use some of the fun new tools in the WonderLab. I figured that since we were going through the trouble calculating ideal frequencies, why not take the opportunity to make those frequencies out of physical objects that we could tune and manipulate ourselves. What better way to make the abstract real than to build a physical example of the frequencies you are working with?” In this space, mathematics, music, and making join hands and dance.
Jamie White
Marketing&Advertising Expert
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So, in the vein of asking real questions— why xylophones?