This week year 4 carried out an experiment to investigate which materials insulate sound the best. We lined shoe boxes with either cardboard, tin foil or cotton wool. Inside the box we placed bells.

          

 

Before carrying out the experiment most of the class predicted that the best insulator would be cardboard. During the experiment we shook the boxes and recorded our results. We used a scale from 1 -10. Where 1 was no sound heard and 10 was lots of sound heard by the class.

      

We found the least effective insulator was cardboard as children recorded between 8 and 10 on their results table. The most effective insulator was cotton wool!! We could hardly hear it, we had to be so quiet!

Next time we are noisy Miss Whitehead now knows she will have to insulate the classroom with cotton wool.

Kelsey Edge and the rest of the class believe it is a good insulator because cotton wool is soft and fluffy and does not vibrate and vibrations are needed for sound to travel.

We'll done to Damian who actually predicted that cotton wool would stop the sound from escaping the best!

We can't wait for our next experiment