Tag: physics

Fake Batteries

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Fake battery spacers.
Yellow’s a fun color!

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.

Desk Toys

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Floating magnet desk toy.
It spins! It floats!

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.

Iterations

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Lens holders and a series of 3D-printed parts, each very slightly different.
Getting there.

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…

Targeted Marketing

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Advertisement for life insurance.
“Satisfied policyholders”?

A collection of advertisements in the latest package of toys for our toy kits. The new catalog – buy even more of our stuff! – makes sense. The Doordash bit seems unrelated, but they’re probably just spraying everywhere and hoping for a connection.

But “burial insurance you can afford” seems… a step too weird? There’s an awful lot to unpack here, and to be honest, we’ve got more important work to do.

Big Tent

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Large camping tent set up indoors.
Spacious!

There are thunderstorms outside, but we need to do a tent check. Do we have all the pieces? Will everything fit inside as planned? If it’s necessary to set this up outdoors during an actual rainstorm, have we done our practice run?

Pick the largest and least occupied space in the building and get to work. If anyone asks, you’re doing this for science! (Technically true.)

Clock

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
A hideous old table clock.
No idea. Really, none.

Sometimes you find oddities whose initial and continued existence boggles the mind. This clock was gathering dust atop the bookcases in the student lounge, battery-free and long-forgotten.

Where did it come from? What life did it live before it came to Olin? Who thought enough of it to acquire, but not enough to take with them?

What should we do with it now?

Collimation

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Which sci-fi monster does it make you think of?

LEDs can do some excellent things, primarily generating a lot of photons for very little power input, with the opportunity to have a fine degree of control over the details. Optically, though, they need a little help.

Fortunately, for our undergraduate labs in need of an adjustable light source, a spherical glass lens and an adjustable housing collimate them well enough. Which, when you need to build a lab’s worth of these things, makes life in the basement a whole lot simpler.

Caution: Magnet

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Bright green sticker reads "Caution / Magnet / Avoid contact with computer discs"
Probably not an actual horseshoe magnet inside there.

Remember those days? Floppy disks and cassette tapes and VHS and all those different storage media using magnetic materials, which could be corrupted or unwritten with inadvertent exposure to strong magnetic fields.

For fun, see how many modern applications still use a stylized version of the 3.5″ floppy as a “save” icon. (As of scribbling this, Microsoft Excel does.)