Hey, it's Nate from Design Squad.

We got a message in from "queenbead," who wanted to ask about making a straw into a flute.

Well, queenbead, I think that's an awesome idea.

A flute makes a tone by blowing air across the hole.

The way we're going to make this instrument, which actually resembles more of an oboe, which has two reeds that vibrate back and forth to make sound when you blow air into them, we're going to flatten out the tip of the straw and then cut it into a point, so it kind of looks like the top of a picket fence.

It also makes a tone from blowing air into it, but instead of just the air vibrating all by itself, the air gets help in vibrating and bouncing back and forth by the tips of the straw bouncing back and forth.

Let's try this out.

(blowing air) (making kazoo-like tone) (chuckles) It's not quite as sweet sounding as a flute, but kind of a fun instrument.

(buzzing on various pitches) All right, it's a little bit hard to vary the pitch.

What I'm doing to vary the pitch is, I'm changing how hard I'm blowing into the tube, and I'm kind of tensing up the straw a little bit to make it change pitch.

Now, another way you can make it change pitch is to vary the length of the straw.

Watch what happens when I cut off the end.

(buzzing) (buzzing on higher pitch) (buzzing on still higher pitch) Not too bad.

What if we could have a way to vary the pitch as we played?

I'm going to take a second straw and push it into the first straw.

And now I've got kind of a straw trombone.

(buzzing low tone) (buzzing higher pitch) (changing pitch high to low) Not too bad.

See what instruments you can design out of things you find around the house, and then send in your designs to the Design Squad website.