Connecting STEM to Music and the Physics of Sound Waves

该项目将推动学生和教师创新技术体验(ITEST)计划的努力，以更好地了解和促进提高学生在科学、技术、工程或数学(STEM)领域追求职业生涯的动机和能力的实践，方法是产生经验结论和/或研究工具，帮助了解哪些模式和干预措施最有可能提高未来STEM和STEM相关密集劳动力的能力。加州大学圣地亚哥分校(UCSD)的这个项目将把音乐声音作为中学生探索和联系海浪科学的相关场所。音乐在青少年群体中有着广泛的兴趣，音乐、科学和数学之间的联系广泛而深刻地植根于历史；特别是声音和波浪科学之间的关系。拟议中的工作长期以来一直在开展以音乐科学为中心的外联活动，最近创建并实施了Listing to Waves，这是一个动手学习项目，通过制作、收集和分析音乐声音以及使用数字技术来深入介绍波浪的物理。这个项目的目标是进一步扩大和发展一个学习计划，寻求在音速世界和波的物理之间建立联系；评估该计划对参与者对科学的一般态度的影响。该项目的目标将是：1：在课外环境中实施该计划，迎合代表性不足的学习者群体；2：反复改进该计划，以最大限度地提高学生的兴趣、乐趣和学习机会；从而生成在代表性不足的人群中应用和测试的详细教案；3：以波的物理为共同标准来提高职业意识；以及4：分析编程在学生与声音世界的联系方式、他们对科学的兴趣和他们的科学认同感方面的影响。波在物理世界中无处不在，对波的行为的深入了解是物理科学的基础，也是许多领域的基础，如化学、神经生物学或地质学、电子和结构工程。此外，了解WAVE是了解信号处理的关键要素，因此也是信息和通信技术(信通技术)工作场所和娱乐业职业准备的重要组成部分。学生们将通过在物理对象中创建波和振动来学习隐藏和无处不在的波的世界，通过在物理对象中创建波和振动来制作和分析音乐声音，使用数字技术分析波形和声学特性，创造声音和音乐，并探索声音如何在环境中传播和在大脑中呈现。这些课程将主要由计算神经生物学家、认知科学家和民族音乐学家授课，并从加州大学圣迭戈分校招聘的工程学本科生那里获得帮助，这些本科生是通过戈登领导力中心招募的。该课程每周两次，为期10周，将在7-9年级学生的课外环境中实施。学习目标是让学生了解什么是声音，物体是如何振动的，以及声音是如何在空间中传播的。它的目的是让学生发展直观的频率分解(傅立叶变换)的概念，了解物体振动的方式(节点，振动模式)，以及物体的形状和材料与它们产生的声音之间的一般关系。学生应该理解谐振和频率滤波的概念。此外，学生还应了解数字信号产生和测量的基础知识：测量工具、采样率、动态范围、截止频率、信噪比、时间尺度。此外，学生将在创作乐器的同时培养工程技能，最大限度地提高振动幅度和声音丰富度，培养他们的协作能力，以及在视频记录和展示他们的创作时的沟通技能。

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by producing empirical findings and/or research tools that contribute to knowledge about which models and interventions with K-12 students and teachers are most likely to increase capacity in the STEM and STEM-cognate intensive workforce of the future. The project from the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) will use musical sound as a relevant venue for middle and high school students to explore and connect with the science of waves. Music is of widespread interest among adolescent populations, and the connections between music, science and math are vast and deep rooted in history; in particular, the relationship between sound and the science of waves. The work being proposed has long been carrying out outreach activities centered on the science of music and have recently created and implemented Listening to Waves, a hands-on learning program that offers an in-depth introduction to the physics of waves through the making, gathering and analyzing of musical sound and the use of digital technologies. The goal of this project is to further expand and develop a learning program that seeks to build a connection between the sonic world and the physics of waves; evaluating the impact of the program on the general attitudes of participants towards science. The objectives of the project will be 1: to implement the program in after-school settings, catering to an underrepresented population of learners, 2: to iteratively refine the program in order to maximize student interest, enjoyment, and learning opportunities; thus generating a detailed lesson plan applied and tested in underrepresented populations, 3: to increase career awareness using the physics of waves as a common denominator, and 4: to analyze the impact of the programming in the way the students relate to the world of sound, their interest in science and their science identity. Waves are pervasive in the physical world and a deep knowledge of the behavior of waves is fundamental to the physical sciences, and in many fields such as chemistry, neurobiology, or geology, electronic and structural engineering. Moreover, understanding waves is a key element of understanding signal processing and is thus an important component of career preparedness for the information and communications technology (ICT) workplace and the entertainment industry. The students will learn the hidden and ubiquitous world of waves as they make and analyze musical sound by creating waves and vibrations in physical objects, use digital technology to analyze waveforms and acoustic properties and to create sound and music, and explore how sound is propagated through the environment and represented in the brain. The classes will be primarily taught by computational neurobiologist and by cognitive scientist and ethnomusicologist, receiving assistance from hired engineering undergraduate students from UCSD, recruited through the Gordon Leadership Center. The course will meet twice a week for the duration of 10 weeks and it will be implemented in after-school settings for students in grades 7-9. The learning goal is for students to understand what sound is, how objects vibrate, and how sound is propagated in space. It is intended for students to develop intuitive notions of frequency decompositions (Fourier transforms), understand the way in which objects vibrate (nodes, vibrational modes), and the general relationship between the objects' shapes and materials and the sound they produce. The students should understand the concepts of resonance and frequency filtering. Also, the students should understand the basics of digital signal generation and measuring: measuring tools, sampling rate, dynamic range, cut-off frequencies, signal to noise ratio, time-scales. In addition, students will develop engineering skills while creating musical instruments maximizing vibrational amplitude and sound richness, develop their capacity to work collaboratively and their communicative skills while video documenting and presenting their creations.