Discoveries in the Physics & Astronomy shop | Science, curiosities, and surprises
When a table is wider than the doorway it’s meant to fit through, it’s time to get creative.
When that table top is for an optics setup, and weighs about 400 kg, creativity involves some sturdy equipment.
Step two: make certain it’s exactly where it wants to stay for the next decade or two.
Large and heavy coils of enamel-clad copper wire, which allow for tight, dense windings, are useful for demonstrating induced currents caused by a changing magnetic field. Students can spin magnets on a rubber band to produce enough electrical energy to light an LED. Not much, sure, but it’s still borderline magical.
Note that these hold up for a long time. Acquired in April of 1966 – just shy of six decades ago – and it’s still in regular use.
That $115.00 price marked on there? $1,171.89 in today’s dollars. Do you think we’ve recouped our investment?
The spring semester PHYS 212 course starts with electrostatics, and what could be more entertaining than a Van de Graaff generator? A whirring rubber belt on two different rollers – one acrylic, the other covered in dense wool – builds up an electric charge on the anodized aluminum dome. The air positively crackles, and the discharge arcs look pretty great in a dark room.
Plus, it makes your skin feel all weird if you get close but not too close.
When learning about the laws of Ohm and Kirchhoff, it helps to have some hands-on experimentation, wiring together batteries and resistors and tiny little incandescent bulbs. Try it, see what happens, measure your voltage and current. Simple enough, yet more satisfying and memorable than just drawing squiggles on paper.
Plus, you get to open and close the switch like a tiny Frederick Frankenstein! Just try to resist the urge to shout out “My Creation Lives!” too loudly.
‘Tis the season for toy kits once more, full of little odds and ends to explore the basic principles of physics. Among them, the humble magnetic compass.
Works with the Earth’s magnetic field, permanent magnets (included in the kit), and even a homemade electromagnet (included in the kit, some assembly required).
Adorably tiny and not ideal for navigation. Please don’t entrust your wilderness survival to these.
The drinking bird, our unofficial department mascot. Even when one takes a tumble – and when it comes to glass bird versus floor, the floor always wins – there’s a great deal of respect for our top-hatted friends.
Kind of surprised someone hasn’t made up T-shirts yet, to be honest.
Welcome back, spring semester!
What to do when a battery-powered device would function better with fewer batteries? In our case, a dead-simple DC motor that gives better results when operating at 4.5 V instead of 6 V – but the holder that completes the circuit is sized for four AA batteries.
The answer: a battery-shaped slug of aluminum, which happily conducts current, fits in the place of a functional battery, and has some adorable bright-yellow heat-shrink tubing to stand out! Mostly because bright colors are easier to identify when you drop something on the floor. Round things have a habit of rolling off of surfaces at inopportune times.
There are many tools for communicating new ideas, including candy. Boxes upon boxes of candy intended for consumption in other countries, apparently.
Ah, physics. Where we have an eclectic assortment of desk toys and mostly-useless gimmicky trinkets because their very nature, the quirks of physics they embody, are helpful explainers of scientific principles.
And while their appeal is typically short-lived – how many times before the levitating magnet loses its novelty? – that ooh! factor only needs to work the first time.
One of the key benefits of a 3D printer is the ability to create prototypes rapidly. Doesn’t quite fit? Adjust the model, re-slice, and set the new print to go. When you’re down to sub-millimeter tweaks with each iteration, it’s a relief to let the machine whir and ooze out the next version.
If at first you don’t succeed, try again and again and again and again…