A colleague of mine used the SimSound game (http://www.iop.org/education/teacher/resources/sim/page_41572.html) as an assignment spread out over one month. SimSound is an engaging multimedia game for 11-16 year olds that aims to use the context of music recording to introduce a range of concepts about waves.

There are four Sim sound challenges:

1. Fix the guitar riff – students learn about pitch and frequency and remove a pitch change in the guitar riff.
2. Fix the vocal – students learn about volume and amplitude and correct.
3. Adding special effects – students learn about analogue and digital signals and use the software to produce sound effects.
4. Make an MP3 download – students learn about digital compression.

You have to download the game from the website an you also need to download Audacity and the LAME MP3 encoder. You can find the downloads on the website of the Institute of Physics (www.iop.org).

After going over the instructions of the game and some of the concepts in the classroom the students played the game at home (homework) and had to publish their results, but also their questions and problems, on a forum on the ELO. The teacher encouraged them to comment on each other’s findings and to help each other.

The students loved it!

Katleen Vanden Driessche

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