Making Your Own Pan Flute

Have you ever looked at an instrument and wondered how it makes such interesting sounds? Scientists explore this and many other properties of sound in a field called acoustics. Today, we’ll be making a pan flute and experimenting with sounds that have different pitches, also learning about their frequency along the way!

 MATERIALS

  • 8-12 disposable straws

  • Wide tape

  • Scissors

TIME ESTIMATED:

15 minutes

DIRECTIONS: 

  1. Cut the straws so they are all different lengths. Have an adult help if needed!

  2. Place the straws on a flat surface and arrange them from longest to shortest. Make sure the tips are all aligned.

  3. Now let’s get the tape ready. Cut a piece long enough to wrap around all of your straws a few times. 

  4. Next, put a piece of tape at the top of the straws, press down and wrap it around until everything is secure. 

  5. Congrats, you have just built a pan flute! Blow into it and see what sounds you can make. 

  6. Does it sound different depending on where you blow? Test this by blowing into each side. 

  7. For some extra fun, see if you can recreate the beat of your favorite song using your flute and what you have discovered about its sounds!

THINK LIKE A SCIENTIST!

  1. Why do the straws make a sound when you blow into them? 

  2. Which side of your pan flute has the highest pitch? Which side has the lowest? 

HOW DOES IT WORK? 

In this experiment, we thought like scientists, exploring acoustics while putting our musical skills to the test. The field of acoustics deals with the properties of sound, including how it is produced. When we blow into our pan flute, it makes sound because the air vibrates inside the straw. In fact, all sound is just vibrations occurring at different frequencies! Frequency describes the rate of those vibrations— because we made our straws different lengths, each one has a different frequency. The longer straws make lower-pitched sounds and have lower frequencies, while the shorter straws make higher-pitched sounds with higher frequencies. We blew the same amount of air into each straw, but the air moved through the shorter straws in a shorter amount of time, so the vibrations moved at a quicker rate, and therefore had a higher frequency. Can you think of any other changes we could make to our pan flute that would affect the sound? What if we poked holes in the straws? What if we didn’t order them by length?

FURTHER EXPLORATION: 

Many different types of scientists use acoustics, ranging from engineers designing buildings to zoologists studying animals. For example, fish can only hear sounds with very low frequencies, while mice mostly hear sounds with higher frequencies, even higher than what we can hear! So, if we wanted these animals to hear our melodies, we would have to build two very different instruments. Now we can see how acoustics helps scientists understand our world, even the parts we can’t hear ourselves!

ANTICIPATED CONCERNS: 

Ask an adult for help with the straws if needed; some are hard to cut!

Looking for more fun at-home STEM activities for your young scientist? Check out our workbook full of exciting science experiments and empowering activities! 

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