Physics and Birdsong: “Listening” with Graphs

Abstract

It is common for high school physics teachers to comment on the challenges they face in supporting students’ graph drawing skills, knowing their importance for the study of physics. This paper suggests a novel and alternative way to support students to develop their graph drawing skills as well as teach them about sound, frequency, and amplitude. Rather than equipment-heavy demonstrations using a microphone, loudspeaker, oscilloscope, and signal generator, I suggest approaching the topic through birdsong and spectrograms.