Our Generation Science shows and workshops are designed to engage young learners using larger-than-life props, actions and experiments. We can’t recreate all that in your living room, but we hope that these activities can get you thinking about the topics in our shows.

Ella’s Wobble

Ella’s Wobble is an interactive story in which pupils explore how sounds are made. They follow a young girl called Ella who has lost her voice. She goes on a journey to find it and learns how sounds are made, what sounds different animals make, how echoes are made and what the word ‘pitch’ means along the way.

The following activities are designed to get young people to think about how different sounds are made, how sounds travel and how we can detect different sounds depending on what produces them.

Download Activities

Supported by the Institute of Acoustics

Big Questions

These questions are designed to get you and your home learners talking about the science behind these activities. We don’t expect you to know everything there is to know about sound, but we do find that exploring and questioning what we know inspires us to find out more. Try using some of these Big Questions below to spark curiosity and see what other questions come up as you are completing these activities. We have provided some smaller steps under each question to help with your discussions as you’re exploring.

Age 5+

Starter Question: We know sound starts as a wobble, or vibration, but how do we hear them?

Q: Why are our ears shaped the way they are?

Hint: The outer ear “collects” the sound waves and funnels them into the ear canal. At the end of the ear canal is our ear drum, which wobbles with the sound. These wobbles make little bones in our inner ear wobble and turn into electrical signals that are sent to our brain. Our brains can recognise these as sound.

Q: Have you ever noticed that you can see a firework before you hear the bang? Why is that?

Hint: Sound travels more slowly than light, so the bang of a firework takes longer to get to you than the flash of light.

Age 5+

Starter Question: Can you hear underwater?

Q: Can you think of any animals that can hear underwater?

Hint: We know that whales can communicate underwater over hundreds of miles

Q: Do you think that sound travels faster in air, or water?

Hint: Sound vibrations can travel in solids, liquids and gases. Sound travels faster in water than air as the particles are closer together.

Q: Is there anything that sounds can’t travel through? Why can’t we hear the sun?

Hint: Sound travels best through dense materials, where all the tiny particles are close together. Outer space doesn’t have any particles in it, so the sound can’t travel through space.

Age 7+

Starter Question: Are echoes useful?

Q: Can you use sound to figure out how close something is?

Hint: You can count the seconds between seeing lightning and hearing thunder to help figure out how far away the storm is

Q: The further away something is, the longer it takes for an echo to get back to you. Do you know any animals or machines that use that?

Hint: Some animals (like bats) use this to navigate or find food, this is called echolocation. An ultrasound machine can look inside our bodies by measuring how long sound takes to bounce off things inside us. The sound this machine uses is so high that we can’t hear it.