Sonification in the Classroom

Turning information into sound, sonification, is not a simple idea but it is fun and can involve both music and science concepts. We have developed a software program for teaching about sonification, which is the process of turning data into sounds. To find out more about sound, please see our introduction to sounds webpage. If students have collected data over some time period, they can use this software to listen to their data. We suggest that students first plot their data and then compare their plots to the ones given in the program. See the Sonification Applications (Sonification for Beginners) page to download the software and for more information about the program.

Misconception Alert

There is a large misconception with students and the public that there is sound in space. However, the number of particles in a cubic centimeter is very small - about 1 per cubic centimeter. At this density, sound waves cannot travel through the stuff in space such that our ears would hear it. Working with the sounds from sonification of space data could add to this misunderstanding.

We want to emphasize that most of the sounds on these pages are not sound waves observed in space, i.e. most of the data are not of waves that travel through a medium by way of modifying the density of the medium. Rather, data from different regions in space, such as solar particles hitting a detector, have been converted into sound. This process is known as sonification.