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Home » Sound: Clucking Chicken

Sound: Clucking Chicken

By Janice VanCleave

A noise-maker that sounds much like a clucking chicken as well as a crowing rooster can be made using the following steps.

1. Using a 16-ounce (480–ml) yellow plastic cup, ask an adult to punch two holes in the bottom of the cup. This can be done with an ice pick or other sharp pointed object, such as a nail.

Clucking Chicken

2. Thread a 12-inch (30-cm) piece of string through the holes and tie it on the outside of the cup.

3.  With the bottom end up, use permanent markers to draw eyes and a bird’s beak on the cup.

4. Tie the free end of the string around the center of a small piece of sponge.
5. Wet the sponge with water, then squeeze as much water as possible out of the sponge. You want it moist but not dripping wet.6. Hold the cup in one hand and wrap the wet sponge around the string as close to the cup as possible. Pressing the sponge against the string, pull the sponge down the string in a jerky motion. A loud sound much like a clucking chicken will be heard. Change the motion of pulling the sponge down the string until more of a crowing sound is heard.

What’s Happening?

Sound is a type of energy that moves through material causing the material to vibrate. Pulling on the string causes it to vibrate, which causes the cup and the air inside it to vibrate. These vibrations are called sound waves, which move through air to your ears. Nerves inside your ears send a message to your brain which interprets it as a specific sound. The way something vibrates results in different sounds being heard.

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Filed Under: Physics, Sound

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Welcome to Janice’s Science Extravaganza!

The spoon hanging from the string vibrates when struck and these vibrations are transmitted through the string and the sound is amplified by the plastic cups. ABOUT ME: Hi, I am Janice VanCleave, author of 50 best-selling science experiment books for children ages 4 through high school. I taught science for 27 years. MORE.....

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