This week in Science, Year 4 had an exciting hands-on lesson exploring how pitch is affected by the features of an object. Mr. McKeown brought his trombone to class, giving the pupils a fantastic opportunity to hear and see how this brass instrument produces different pitches. The children eagerly listened as he demonstrated how changing the length of the trombone’s slide alters the pitch.
To deepen their understanding, they compared the trombone to two other brass instruments: the tuba and the trumpet. They observed that the tuba, with its much larger size and longer tubing, produces a lower pitch, while the trumpet, with its shorter tubing, creates a higher pitch. Through this exploration, Year 4 discovered that an instrument’s pitch is influenced by the size and length of its tubing – the longer the tube, the lower the pitch, and the shorter the tube, the higher the pitch.
