 Hello and welcome to Do Try This at Home, brought to you by the Intitutor Physics. My name is Mikey and this is my front room. We're making these films because we want to help parents and carers in the UK and Ireland and all around the world to get their kids and families excited about science without even leaving the house. In this video we're going to show you how to make a super simple rubber band bass guitar. I love doing this one because it's so simple and easy to do and uses just one household item. A rubber band. But if you have more than one you can help everyone do it at the same time. But you might want to demonstrate how to do it yourself first. Stretch the rubber band between your thumb and the forefinger of one hand. If your family have smaller hands you might want to find a few smaller rubber bands for them to do it. Then you want to get a little bit of tension. Once you've got that right you're going to just gently place your index finger in one ear and then with the other hand gently twang away and you should hear a loud noise just like a bass guitar. If you play around with tension and less tension you can vary the pitch of the sound. You could even try and play some famous bass lines like my terrible rendition of Seven Nation Army. Once you have your family trying it along with you I've sent them to take the finger out of their ear but keep twanging and pay attention to the difference in what they can hear. So what's actually going on here? Well all sounds are vibrations and when you twang a rubber band it makes it vibrate. And you can hear this even without your finger touching your ear because the vibrating band causes the air around it to vibrate and the air carries the vibration as a sound to your ear. But when your finger is touching your ear it's much louder and that's because solid things like your finger are much better at carrying sound vibrations than gases like the air. So with your finger touching your ear you hear a much louder sound from the rubber band. So that's how you make a rubber band bass guitar. If you're not totally sure about the science don't worry just have a play around together have fun with your family and if you need to look it up together. Thanks a lot and see you next time.