What you’ll need
● A disposable rubber glove
● A plastic drinking straw
● A plastic water bottle
● A pair of scissors
● A rubber band
● Masking tape or washi tape
What to do
● Snip a tiny hole in one of the fingers on the glove. Cut a few centimetres off of the straw and insert your new piece of straw in the hole. Tape it in tightly!
● Cut off the bottom of the plastic bottle. Have an adult help cutting the bottle smoothly, so it doesn’t cut your skin.
● Put the glove over the top of the plastic bottle and wrap the rubber band around it to hold it as tightly as possible. You don’t want any air to be able to leak out at the mouth of the bottle!
● Hold your new bagpipe so that the straw is in your mouth and the water bottle faces straight up. Now blow through the straw! You’ll hear a loud foghorn sound!
What’s going on?
With the glove tightly attached to the mouth of the bottle and bent toward your mouth, not all the air you blow into it gets out at the same time. Since the glove is made of a stretchy elastic material, it stretches out and then contracts while you blow on the bagpipe. When it is stretched, more air is allowed through. This cycle repeats as long as you are blowing into it, but it happens very quickly, which makes part of the glove vibrate. This vibration creates sound waves that travel into the bottle. The vibration is carried through the bottle and the air inside it, which creates a resonance. This is why the bagpipe is so loud.