demo
rallain | February 14, 2010I was thinking about some experiments that deal with friction and I wanted to show something with a force probe. The problem is that most people don't have one of these. So, I decided to try and make one out of simple things. In this case, I am using some straws, a rubber band and some paper clips. Let me draw a little sketch of how this thing works.
The basic idea is to use the rubber band to measure the force (by measuring the amount the rubber band stretches). The two paper clips do two things. First, it allows you to hook up the device to something (like hanging some Lego bricks on…
rallain | February 11, 2010Do you have a green laser pointer? You should. They are relatively inexpensive now. What if you take your laser pointer and aim it at stuff in your house? The laser dot always looks green, right? This is actually a pretty important point about color. Suppose I have the lights on in a room and I look at a blue book. White light is basically all the colors of the visible spectrum, so a diagram like this might be appropriate:
So, the book looks blue (since that is what your eye sees). Note that I just showed blue light coming off the book, really the other colors reflect some too but…
rallain | February 9, 2010Note: This is part of my ongoing attack of ESPN's show Sport Science. Really, I am continuing to look at the episode where they calculate a football player can produce 57,000 Watts by pulling some stuff. Wait...I don't want to limit my stuff to Sport Science. I see this stuff all the time. The problem is that people confuse the force needed to move something with its weight.
So, you want me to pull something? Great, I am a physics guy. I could probably pull maybe 100 pounds. That seems reasonable? But wait! I will increase it to 500 pounds! That is like two huge football players.…
rallain | February 4, 2010Suppose you want to move an empty paper clip box by shooting it with a toy dart gun. Why would you want to do this? Don't worry about that - this is my example and I am sticking with it. Should you shoot a dart that sticks to the box or should you shoot one that bounces off? I made a video of this exact situation. Note: you could obviously come up with other objects to do this with, but I always like to use more normal stuff.
In case it wasn't clear, the first dart bounced back and made the box go much faster (and farther) than the dart that stuck (inside) the box. The usual question is…
rallain | January 27, 2010This is actually been sitting around for a while waiting for me to post it. Here is another short Christmas-toy demo. I am going to pull this yo-yo at different angles and on two different surfaces. Check it out.
What is going on here? Let me look at the first case where I pull the yo-yo and it slides without rolling. Here is a diagram.
Normally, I would just say - "hey - a free body diagram". And this is one, but you have to be careful. Normally, a free body diagram treats an object as though it were a point mass. You can't do that in this case because you have to consider rotation…
rallain | December 28, 2009What happens when your kids won't give you a turn on the Wii? Simple. You take their LEGO bricks and their slinky and do some physics. I will keep this simple. Basically, I created a slinky holder out of LEGO pieces and added LEGO bricks to the end to stretch it. Here is the video.
Lego + Slinky = Physics from Rhett Allain on Vimeo.
Maybe in an un-Dot Physics fashion, I am not going to analyze this data. I am not going to even describe the physics. Instead, I will leave this as a What Can You Do With This in the style of Dan Meyer.
I will give a couple of hints. First, I put this on…
rallain | December 20, 2009This is one of my favorite demos. I like it because anyone can do it at home and people usually find the results surprising. Here is the situation:
How much of yourself could you see in a small mirror? What if you move farther away from the mirror, can you see more of yourself? If you want to do the demo yourself, now would be a good time. All you need is a small mirror (I used a platter from a 10 GB hard drive - they make awesome mirrors). It will help out a lot if you can mount the mirror on a surface that is very near to vertical.
Here is my version of this demo (in case you can't…
rallain | December 3, 2009I showed this demo in class and I was surprised at how cool the students thought it was.
They actually thought it was some kind of trick. It is not a trick. Instead, this is an example of the angular momentum principle. If you want to try this yourself, I guess you are going to have to find some type of wheel. I attempted to get this to work with a small Lego wheel, but it wouldn't spin fast enough. You should be able to do this with one of those toy gyroscopes though. Anyway, here is the angular momentum principle:
Or, if you prefer it without a derivative it could be written as:…
rallain | October 27, 2009I know I saw this demo somewhere. Maybe it was at an AAPT conference a few years ago. I have always wanted to build this, but never got around to it. Until now. Here is the demo (it is easy, you should make one too)
So, how does this work? I think the simplest explanation is that the drinks do not spill because the string can only pull in the direction of the standing glasses. A slightly better explanation is that the string lets the tray rotate so that the sum of the acceleration and the gravitational field is in the direction of the open ending of the cup. I am still not happy with…
rallain | October 24, 2009Sometimes it is difficult to come up with new labs. Ideally, a lab should show use some of the basic physics principles as well as have something the students can measure. What to do with circular motion? I don't know how I forgot this, but here is a lab I used to do as an undergraduate student. I also like it because it doesn't really need fancy stuff like PASCO probes or anything. The basic idea is that a small mass is swung around in a circle with the tension in the string controlled by hanging a mass on the other end. Here, let me show you.
Circular Motion Lab from Rhett Allain on…
rallain | October 12, 2009I put together this short presentation on fake videos for a class. What the heck, I will also put it online so that maybe some other people can use it. So, here it is. I have it in many forms. First, a video of me going through the talk. Then I have the keynote and PowerPoint files with the movies. Feel free to use it as you see fit. You might want to modify some of the files, I have no problem with that.
How to spot a fake video from Rhett Allain on Vimeo.
And the other versions:
Keynote (fakevideos.key - 46.1 MB) - this has the movies embedded
PowerPoint (fakevideos.ppt - 2.6 MB) -…
rallain | October 6, 2009You know I like demos, right? This one is quite fun to do even in a class. The basic idea is to take a bucket of water and swing it around in a circle over your head. Simple, but if you have never done this one, it can be a little intimidating. Here is an example.
Water Demo from Rhett Allain on Vimeo.
So, how does this work? What does it show? Really, the question is: why doesn't the water fall out of the bucket?
First, I like to talk about "fall" what does that mean? I guess that means that the object has a downward gravitational force, but no force upward to give it a zero…
rallain | May 25, 2009When I was talking about balancing a stick, I mentioned the moment of inertia. Moment of inertia is different than mass, but I like to call it the "rotational mass". What does mass do? Things with larger mass are more difficult to change their motion (translational motion). A similar thing is true for the "rotational mass". Things with larger rotational mass are more difficult to change rotational motion. Here is the demo.
Demo for Moment of Inertia from Rhett Allain on Vimeo.
Why do I like this demo? First, it uses ordinary things. I consider juice boxes to be pretty ordinary.…
rallain | May 12, 2009Maybe you have seen this trick. Basically, you hold by supporting it with two fingers from the bottom. You then move your hand around to keep it balanced while the stick is vertical. It is really not as hard as it looks. Also, there are two things that can make your job easier. Use a longer stick, or add an extra mass at the end of the stick. Here is a video of me demonstrating this. (I forgot, this also an event in the show Unbeatable Banzuke)
Balancing a Stick Demo from Rhett Allain on Vimeo.
So, how does this work? Let me start with a stick that is mostly vertical and supported by…
rallain | April 6, 2009Cats can be entertaining - especially when they are someone else's cat and that someone made a video. Really, this post is about analyzing video with Logger Pro (in a tutorial type fashion). I just happens that I chose this cat video to analyze. Here is the video:
I am going to look at the part where the cat gets on the fan. I will try to step through the analysis so you can do your own.
Get the video
Actually, the first step is to find a video. YouTube has tons of stuff. Also, you could make your own video with a camera. A couple of things to make your life easier:
A non-zoom video…
rallain | April 3, 2009I found this video to be very entertaining.
Dry Ice is LEEEEEEATHALLY DAAAANGEROUS? - These bloopers are hilarious
William Beaty's site has tons of great stuff - http://www.amasci.com/
rallain | February 21, 2009This is one of my favorite demos. Easy to do and doesn't really require any equipment. The basic idea is that you support a meter stick horizontally with two fingers. Slide your fingers in and they will both meet at the center of mass. Here is a video.
Meterstick friction demo from Rhett Allain on Vimeo
So, how does it work? To explain this, you need to understand friction and equilibrium. Well, nobody really understands friction - but anyway..
First, what is equilibrium? Equilibrium means that an object's motion does not change. For this case that means that both it's velocity and it…
rallain | January 29, 2009I really didn't want to post this, but I am going to anyway. I used ScreenToaster.com to make a screen capture movie (with audio) of a tutorial on spreadsheets.
This should accompany my previous post on numerical calculations.
Free online screen recorder
rallain | October 4, 2008Magic tricks are cool. Especially when the trick is really physics. In this trick, I can make one of the four balls move more than the others. (When you watch the video, you will see why I am not a professional magician). You could set this up in a variety of ways. I state that if we (me and people around me) all work together with our mind and focus on the same ball, our brain waves can resonate with that ball and make it move. I let the people around me pick. In this video, I make the smallest two move.
So, what is the trick? The trick is not a trick. It is not resonance with brain…