Music 

Garage Band

Make your own music! Compose with any instrument or beat, all from the exclusive Garageband library.

Make Your Own Rainstick

The rainstick is a traditional instrument thought to have originated in Chile, where cactus spines are inserted into dried, hollowed-out cactus branches that are then filled with pebbles, raw rice, or dried beans.  

Water-Bottle Membranophone

This surprising instrument is fun to make—and even more fun to play.

Here, a water bottle and a paper tube make a membranophone—an instrument that produces sound from a vibrating stretched membrane. Kazoos and drums are both examples of membranophones. This one sounds a bit like a cross between a saxophone and a clarinet.

Pipes of Pan

When you hold a seashell to your ear, you can hear a steady roar.

This simple construction allows you to separate the hum of background noise into some of its different frequencies.

Resonator

If you vibrate something at just the right frequency, you can get a big reaction.

In this activity, wooden dowels of varying lengths—each loaded with the same mass—are vibrated at identical frequencies. When the vibration matches the resonant frequency of one of the dowels, that dowel vibrates with a large amplitude.