Dancing Sprinkles!

A couple of weeks ago my fourth-grader had a science experiment to do for one of her e-learning classes. Like most of the nation, we are working and schooling from home right now. For this experiment (really a demo) she needed to make sprinkles dance. We grabbed a bowl, covered it tightly with a clear, plastic wrap, as shown below. Then you need a speaker and some sprinkles. We grabbed my other daughter's karaoke machine for a speaker.

Then we turned on some music, cranked up the volume, and placed the pull right next to the speaker. Then we had dancing sprinkles!!!

Energy from the sound waves is transferred to the clear plastic wrap. As long as the sprinkles are light in weight, the vibrations in the plastic wrap will cause the sprinkles to jump! Notice how the smaller sprinkles move more than the larger sprinkles.

A fun little experiment to fill a bit of time at home.