Demonstrations
Sand Lever
As you pull down on the rope a force is applied downward that lifts the sandbag on the other end of the lever. This downward force is called Torque. As you apply torque at a further distance from the fulcrum, it becomes easier to lift the bag of sand.
Floating head
With a mirror placed below a table and a person positioned such that only their head is visible above the table, the illusion of a floating head is created.
Square-wheel Tricycle
The square wheel tricycle rolls smoothly along a track made of inverted catenaries. A catenary is the shape resulting from the graph of hyperbolic cosine, and turning this curve upside down gives the inverted catenary needed for a square wheel to roll smoothly.
Hula Hoops
Hula hooping is a perfect example of balancing different forces in nature by simply using a person’s body. A person is able to keep a hula hoop spinning around the waist by applying an upward force and a turning force (torque), maintaining the centripetal force of the hoop.
Coriolis Carousel
The two riders sit on the apparatus that is rotated about its center. Since they are in a rotating reference frame, when they try to throw balls at each other, the balls are deflected due to the Coriolis force.
Magnetic slime
Slime is combined with iron filings to create magnetic slime. The iron filings adhere to the slime, causing it to stretch when a strong magnet is held nearby, as the iron filings are attracted by the magnet.
Tesla Coil
As a current passes through the outer coil, as magnetic field is created and due to the large number of windings of the inner coil, a huge step up in voltage occurs. Such a large potential difference is created that bolts of electricity leave the top to connect the high potential difference at the top […]
Attracting Bowling Balls
Bernoulli’s Principle tells us that a high speed of air causes low pressure. By aiming a leafblower between two hanging bowling balls, we can see this in action! The low pressure between the balls force these heavy objects together.
Infrared imaging
Every object with nonzero temperature emits radiation. Our bodies emit radiation in the infrared range. Cameras that are sensitive to these wavelengths of light can make out images of people even when there is no other light in the room since it is our bodies themselves that emit the light even if we can’t see […]
Laser Waterfall (Light Bending Waterfall)
Since the index of refraction of water is higher than air, when the laser travels down the waterfall, it strikes the boundary at a large enough angle so that it experiences total internal reflection and the laser beam is trapped in the stream of water.
Cornstarch Pool
Mixing cornstarch and water creates a non-Newtonian fluid, a fluid that changes viscosity under stress. With high stressed, this fluid acts as a solid but returns to a liquid under low or no stress. This allows one to let this fluid slip through your fingers, but also run across a pool of this fluid without […]
Chaotic pendulums
A double, or chaotic, pendulum undergoes simple harmonic motion when the initial displacement from equilibrium is small. However, increasing this displacement gives way to chaotic motion, demonstrating the absence of predictability in a non-linear system.
Rubens’ tube
The Rubens’ tube is a long, closed tube with propane pumped in and holes drilled along the top for the propane to escape. Igniting the propane along the top gives a “wall” of fire where propane and oxygen are present. Playing a pure tone in the tube will create sinusoidal peaks and valleys in the […]
Bernoulli principle with leaf blower
The leaf blowers are used to create a jet of air. Through Bernoulli’s principle, inside the jet of air where the velocity is at its highest has a low pressure while the outside the stream has low velocity and high pressure. This difference in pressure allows the ball to be suspended by the leaf blower.
Jacob’s ladder
At the base of the two probes, there is a gap that once the electric potential is high enough, the air in the gap begins to ionize. Just as hot air rises, the hot ionized air in between the two probes will begin to rise until the distance between the probes is too great and […]
Spark Detector
In this demo, a high voltage is placed between some wires and a grounded electrode. When an alpha emitter is placed near the wires, sparks start to jump between wires and the electrode. The alphas temporarily ionize some of the air in this region, creating an easier path for electricity to flow!
Light Bending Demo- corn syrup tank.
In this demonstration, laser light reflects off the surface of a flat mirror as it passes through a non-uniform sugar solution. After each bounce the beam curves in the sugar solution and comes back down to the mirrors surface.
Probing the nucleus air hockey
Scientists shoot high energy particles at an unknown and watch what comes out of the collision in order to determine the composition of the target. In the same way, visitors will be instructed to hit an air hockey puck (probe) into a covered area where some unknown shape has been placed (the nucleus). By judging […]