Students track sounds, science

Students in science teacher Ben Young’s class listened to the call of the wild Tuesday as University of Montana doctoral student Alexis Billings gave a presentation on animal sound identification.

Billings, along with University of Montana associate professors, spoke to Glacier and Flathead high school students and led simple science activities as part of a “We are Montana in the Classroom” outreach tour.

Other activities included building rockets and marble roller-coasters along with brain observations and dissections.

Young said visits like this give students an opportunity to “get a glimpse about what they can do in their future.”

After Billings’ presentation, the freshman students split into groups to listen and look at visual representations of animal sounds from bearded seals, bears, elephants, birds, dogs and cats using Raven, an interactive sound analysis software from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Billings uses the software in her own research to record chickadee and Stellar’s jay responses after playing predator sounds.

“My research is in animal behavior and avian alarm call systems,” Billings said.

Students also had the opportunity to record animal sounds from the species homo sapiens.

“They can compare their voices between each other. They can actually see what their voice looks like. They can play it back to see how it sounds, so it’s just connecting to the sound in a different way instead of just hearing it you can see it as well,” Billings said.

Freshman Taylor Dannic’s group decided to mimic the famous whistle of the fictional mockingjay from the movie “Hunger Games.” Dannic practiced the famous call a couple of times before hitting record.

After, a blue wavelength showed up on the screen, showing the power of Dannic’s whistle over time, according to Billings. Below was another visual representation of the recording in variations of black and gray peaks.

“The darkness corresponds to intensity or frequency,” Dannic said.

In the classroom next door to Young, Aaron Thomas, associate professor of chemistry at the University of Montana, oversaw students building marble roller-coasters in Glacier science teacher Austin Robbins’ class.

In all corners of the room, students were busy folding paper into slides, tunnels and funnels taping them together in zigzag patterns on the walls. The goal was to have a marble roll through each contraptions in 10 seconds.

In one group, sophomore Annalise McGuire stood on top of a chair to place a zigzag of paper slides down the wall starting from the ceiling while sophomore Katelyn Smigaj handed her tape. Smigaj said they would continue building down the wall to build speed and momentum.

Robbins said outreach events such as this were good opportunities for students to interact with college faculty.

In addition to the school visits, University of Montana President Royce Engstrom and other UM administrators toured Orthopedic Rehab Physical Therapy in Kalispell to visit university alumni and learn how their education has served them in their profession. Engstrom also met with university alumni at Kalispell Brewing Co.