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INTRODUCTION
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The Yerkes Winter Institute is a three-day immersion program that
allows students to explore one topic in depth. This year the topic
was Sound, which built upon the autumnal laboratory investigations.
The students rotated among three interconnected daytime
experiments, made nighttime observations,
and shared their investigations with parents, siblings and younger
students who joined us at the end of the institute. [photos
of parents and closing]
The Yerkes environment provides a great contrast to the urban environment
of Chicago. The institute is also a learning experience for the instructors.
For example, by pairing classroom teachers with researchers, each partner
can learn from the other's complementary skills.
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| DAYTIME
EXPERIMENTS |
String Telephone Lab |
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Students investigated how sound is transmitted by learning about
the nature of a mechanical longitudinal wave. [more
photos]
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Phonographs & Speakers Lab |
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Students constructed gramophone-like devices to listen to vinyl
recordings, examined records and "styluses" with a microscope, and
inspected commercial speakers to explore how the entire complexity
of music is made via one-dimensional motions. [more
photos]
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Musical Strings Lab |
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Students developed a qualitative understanding of the first and
second laws of strings: frequency is inversely proportional to length
and directly proportional to tension. They then applied this knowledge
to make strings of different lengths and tensions sound the same.
[more photos]
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NIGHTTIME OBSERVATIONS |
 When weather permitted,
nighttime observations were made with Professor Kyle Cudworth and the 40"
refractor and with Professor Ed Kibblewhite and the smaller 24" telescope.
This gave students the thrill of using a research-grade telescope and an
appreciation for the grand scales of science.
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INSTRUCTORS |
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• Charles Brass
• Kyle Cudworth
• Bill Fisher
• Walter Glogowski
• Ryan Hennessy
• Ed Kibblewhite
• Randy Landsberg
• Craig Tyler
• Phil Wisecup
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