New displays in the Collier STEM Gallery relate music to engineering and math
Students examine the deconstructed Fender Stratocaster electric guitar display in the STEM Gallery.
Updates to the Dr. Donald W. Collier STEM Gallery are helping young learners explore the science of sound during MIM’s STEM: How Science Brings Music to Life field trip. New thematic displays expand on the ways that sound is deeply connected to engineering and math, reinforcing the lessons that museum guides share with students during STEM tours.
“On our STEM field trip, students learn that sound is vibration. Every instrument makes a unique sound, and every instrument includes elements that make its unique sound louder,” says Mike Silvers, curator of education. “The Machines of Music exhibit shows students that musical instruments use simple machines—such as levers, cranks, pulleys, gears, wedges, and screws—in their design and function. And the Mathematical Melodies exhibit shows how ratios and fractions can be applied to music.”
In the STEM Gallery, the Machines of Music exhibit offers examples of how instruments use simple machines. The exhibit’s highlight, a Renner piano action model, demonstrates how a system of levers, springs, and counterbalances helps a hammer strike a string when a player presses a piano key. On the opposite wall, the Mathematical Melodies exhibit illustrates how dividing a length of string, pipe, or tubing into exact proportions produces distinct intervals. Instruments such as a set of sikura panpipes, a đàn bâù plucked zither, and MIM’s “visible organ” explain how the mathematical relationships between ratio and interval inform tuning systems used around the world.
Young learners look at the Machines of Music display, which prominently features a Renner piano action model.
Students also explore MIM’s Orientation Galleries and Geographic Galleries on the STEM tour, and every activity and example throughout the field trip emphasizes the lesson that sound is vibration. During a recent STEM field trip, 6th grade students used a hollow wooden box to amplify the volume of a music box and counted hollow, hard-bodied resonators on acoustic instruments in the Africa Gallery. They joined hands to close an electrical circuit and make noise with an energy stick, then they learned how amplifiers use circuits to make electric guitars more audible and explored electronic instruments in the United States / Canada Gallery.
“The field trip to the Musical Instrument Museum had a powerful impact on my students, both academically and personally,” says a 3rd grade teacher whose class recently went on the STEM tour. “It helped bring our learning about sound energy to life in a tangible and engaging way. Students were able to make real-world connections between our classroom discussions on vibrations, pitch, and volume and the instruments they saw and heard at the museum.”
STEM program development is supported by The Donald W. Collier Charitable Trust II.
Take the young learners of your class, youth group, or club on an exciting musical expedition at MIM! Learn more about the STEM: How Science Brings Music to Life guided tour and other field trip options at MIM.org/field-trips.
