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Writer's pictureChristophe Chazot

Science experiments with a smartphone for high school curriculum (ISCED3, K12 9th-12th)

Updated: Dec 1, 2022

Smartphones are the ideal tool to conduct rapid experimentation on a variety of science topics. We have gathered here 10 experiments that are aligned with the high school curriculum and will help your students put in practice the theory on movement, sound, light or kinematics.


Study of sound waves: Studying sound with FizziQ is made extremely simple and fast by the use of the sound library and the frequency generator which provide access to calibrated sounds that can be easily and directly analyzed by the student with sound portable. The practical study of sound waves becomes accessible and allows the teacher to experimentally illustrate many concepts that are sometimes difficult to teach. Below is a list of 10 protocols that you can use in the classroom or as homework:

  1. - Addition of noise to show the +3 db increase : https://en.fizziq.org/post/does-adding-two-sounds-really-increase-the-sound-level-by-3-decibels

  2. - Relation between distance to source and level : https://en.fizziq.org/team/chloé-at-the-concert

  3. - Frequency analysis with the study of tuning forks : https://en.fizziq.org/team/tuning-forks

  4. - Music scale : https://www.fizziq.org/team/la-gamme

  5. - Study of acoustic beats : https://en.fizziq.org/team/flume

  6. - Inharmonic Sounds : https://en.fizziq.org/team/the-sound-of-the-bell

  7. - Spectral analysis of vowels : https://en.fizziq.org/team/vowels

  8. - Noise cancellation : https://en.fizziq.org/team/noise-cancellation

  9. - Speed of sound calculation : https://en.fizziq.org/team/bang

  10. - Dopler effect : https://en.fizziq.org/team/doppler-effect


Study of movement: Smartphones include more sensors which are very useful for studying movement: the accelerometer and the gyroscope. These sensors produce data at high frequencies and are intuitive to students, and shed light on certain concepts that are difficult to study in the laboratory. Here is a list of 6 easy-to-perform movement experiments that use these sensors:

  1. - Compute the value of gravity g by measuring a free fall : https://en.fizziq.org/team/galileo

  2. - Centripetal acceleration and rotation rate : https://en.fizziq.org/team/astronauts-and-spinners

  3. - Build your own pedometer : https://en.fizziq.org/team/build-your-own-pedometer

  4. - Rectilinear movements with the study of a robot on Mars : https://en.fizziq.org/team/build-your-own-pedometer

  5. - Energy conservation with pendulum : https://www.fizziq.org/team/leibnitz


Kinematic study: Motion sensors such as the accelerometer or the gyroscope allow a microscopic analysis of the movements but do not allow more global analysis of the movement. It is for this reason that we have developed the kinematics module which allows video analysis of the position, speed or rotation of an object in space. Thanks to the power of laptops, students can very quickly analyze with their laptop sequences that they will record themselves or that they will find on the site www.fizziq.org or that will be sent to them by their teacher. Here are two examples of protocols that can be implemented:

  1. - Analysis of landing speed of a Space X rock : https://en.fizziq.org/team/space-x

  2. - Energy conservation of a pendulum : https://en.fizziq.org/team/huygens



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1 Comment


Unknown member
Mar 23, 2022

Hi, thanks for writing. It was really helpful. Where can we find solutions to protocols in order to cross-check if our result are correct? Thanks again.

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