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Physics Experiments Here are some other interesting physics experiments. Ferrofluid - 4/6/05 This magnetic fluid is great for visualizing magnetic fields (but it is very messy!). When you place a magnet under the fluid, it forms spikes called Rosensweig instability peaks. You can buy ferrofluid here. Links Ferrofluid Designs - beautiful designs made at MIT, see also their movie Ferrofluid Movies - at the University of Wisconsin, my favorites are the leaping ferrofluid and ferrofluid spikes Ferrofluid Photographs - Strange Matter exhibit Solar Furnace - 12/25/02 This 38" x 50" Fresnel lens can focus sunlight like a giant magnifying glass. I think these are used for TV magnifiers. The focal point is blindingly bright and it burns quickly. I imagine this is what it must be like on the surface of Mercury (temperature: 662° F.) Boy, I’m just glad I don’t live on Mercury! Penny - before and after. Pennies made after 1982 are 97.5% Zinc (melting temperature: 787.24° F.) This Fresnel lens is powerful enough to melt dimes which are 91.67% Copper (melting temperature: 1982.1° F.) Links Archimedes’ Death Ray - used polished sheilds to burn ships Marshmallow Roaster - Fresnel lens Giant Bubble - 3/20/05 We made these giant cylindrical soap films at the Children’s Museum. Due to surface tension, the sides of these soap films would slowly shrink inward to form a minimal surface called a catenoid: (* runtime: 4 seconds *) r := Cosh[z]; ParametricPlot3D[{r Cos[theta], r Sin[theta], z, {EdgeForm[], SurfaceColor[Hue[theta/(2Pi)]]}}, {theta, 0, 2Pi}, {z, -1,1}, Axes -> False, Boxed -> False, PlotPoints -> {73, 51}]; Bubble Links Bubble Records - impressive bubbles by Fan Yang Double Bubbles and Polytope Bubbles by Dr. John Sullivan Dr. Maarten Rutgers - uses soap films like 2D wind tunnels, see his soap film vortices and 50' soap film antibubbles - interesting nice rendering of bubbles Single Slit Diffraction - 4/17/03 Here is a picture of some nice single slit diffraction from my 3 mW green laser pointer. This pattern was made by shining the laser through a tiny adjustable gap in a pair of calipers. One can easily calculate the light’s wavelength from this pattern: l = d x / L = 532 nm where d is the gap, x is the distance between each bright spot, and L is the distance from the wall. Links Single slit diffraction of light - Java applet 350 mW green laser pointer - world’s most powerful, pops balloons, lights matches, cuts tape, burns trash bags, range of 100 miles, hand-held and battery-powered! blue laser pointer - very cool but very expensive, I’ll wait until the price goes down Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser (MTHEL) - infrared laser that can intercept missiles and shells Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT) Scan - 11/7/06 I always enjoy a good excuse to learn something new about scientific technology. After falling off my bicycle, I was given a CAT scan at the emergency room. The left picture shows a side cross-section of my head and the right picture shows a top cross-section (the back of my head is at the bottom of the picture). Notice the lenses inside my eyeballs. Link: 3D Brain - Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) rendered in POV-Ray by Paul Bourke Mentos - 8/12/07 . Link: Classic Experiment and Domino Effect - impressive movies by EepyBird Plasma Experiment - 1/14/04 In this experiment, we used a Langmuir probe to measure plasma electron density and temperature. In the left photo, you can see the purple plasma glowing inside the observation window. The drawing on the right summarizes what the overall crazy setup looked like. Click here to go to my high voltage page. Cryogenics - 3/9/04 Here is a picture of me working with liquid helium which has a boiling temperature of 4.2 K (-452.1° F.). This was a fun experiment to study the lambda point of liquid helium and the superconducting properties of tin. The lowest temperature we reached was about 1.2 K (-457.2° F.). Piezoelectric Motor Tester - 2003-2004 This was my undergraduate research project for my school’s experimental gravity program. Our goal was to test the equivalence principle, which states that the ratio of inertial to gravitational mass is the same for all types of matter. We sought to test this hypothesis by using an extremely sensitive cryogenic torsion pendulum composed of masses with differing neutron to proton ratios. This pendulum is located in an abandoned missile bunker in Washington. My responsibility was to build a motor to rotate this pendulum. This was to be a very precise motor, composed of stacks of piezoelectric sheering plates. The above photos show a stack being tested at low temperature inside a vacuum can in a liquid nitrogen bath (-320° F.). The picture on the left shows some of my blueprints for this project. Whirlpool - 3/16/08 I saw this beautiful whirlpool below our helicopter during our Kauai helicopter tour. Smoke Ring - 10/13/07 Here is a giant vortex ring of smoke from an explosion at the Miramar Air Show. Physics Links Oobleck - amazing non-Newtonian fluid that behaves like a solid when you move fast Schlieren Images - heat visualizations by Gary Settles Aerogel - world’s lightest solid, invented by NASA Super-Kamiokande - Cherenkov detector Sound Levitation - Sounds wave cause a piece of paper to levitate.