Restaurant, grocery stores and gyms all use different background music to encourage actions from their customers. For example, fitness clubs play fast-tempo music to encourage people to keep exercising at a fast pace. The tempo of the background music is an important part of the environment each business wants to foster. First, you'll first need to practice taking the beat of different songs. Start by playing a song and tapping or clapping out the beat for 10 seconds, then multiplying by six to get the beats per minute for the song. Once you are a beat expert, visit different locations and take note of the tempo of their music choice. Before visiting these businesses, hypothesize which places will play up-tempo music and which won't. Rank the beats of different stores by how fast they are and test your hypothesis.
Form a hypothesis in which you predict which types of music make plants grow taller or faster. To test how music affects plant growth, you will need 40 containers with seeds of the same plant. One set (10) of seed will be "listening" to classical music, one to hard rock, one to spoken word, and the last will be the control group and listen to nothing. Over a period of three weeks, check on the plants to see their progress. Test your findings against your hypothesis and see what kind of music is best for plant growth.
For this experiment you will need at least 10 subjects — friends willing to take a simple math test while listening to music. Start with 25 subjects and narrow it down based on mathematical ability; to test whether music will affect performance first you need subjects with equal math abilities. Create a simple 20-question math test with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems. Play different types of music such as jazz, classical and rock music. Record how long it takes for each subject to finish the problems while listening to the different types of music. Test the performance of subjects while listening to music, and also compare that to performance while the room is silent. Record the results and performances and compare them against your hypothesis.
How does the frequency of the note produced change as fluid is added to the glass? For this experiment you will need two or more wine glasses, water, measuring cup and an electronic chromatic tuner (which you can buy at most music stores). Turn on the chromatic tuner and place it near the wine glass. Sound a note by rubbing an empty glass rim with your wet finger and measure the frequency of sound the empty glass makes. Then add a measure amount of water to the glass and compare the sound to the empty glass. Keep adding water and recording frequencies until the glass is full. Document your results and compare how the amount of water in the glass affected the sound the wine glass made.