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Radiometer

Detection of IR radiation from hair dryer and/or special IR source.

What it Shows:

Detection of infra-red radiation by the rotation of a paddle-wheel vane inside a low pressure flask.

How it Works:

A radiometer consists of a partially evacuated flask containing a four bladed vane (see figure 1). One side of each blade is a matt black, the other silver. The black surface, being a better absorber and radiator of heat, warms the air above its surface more than the silver. The resulting higher kinetic energy of these air...

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Edge Diffraction

What it shows:

A point light source will produce seemingly sharp shadows which turn out to be not at all sharp when viewed under magnification. Narrow interference bands are seen within the shadow of a straight edge while more complicated shapes yield more complicated interference bands and striations.

...

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CRT Paddle Wheel

A beam of cathode rays (electrons) impinging on a paddle wheel cause it to spin and travel down the vacuum tube.

crookes tubes

What it Shows

A paddle wheel is suspended by its axle inside a Crookes tube so that when the paddle vanes spin the entire...

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Mixing and Unmixing

Food coloring in glycerine is mixed by turning a drum, then unmixed by reversing. Has entropy decreased?

What it shows:

Ink is squirted into a fluid and mixed in until it disappears. By precisely undoing the motions in the reverse direction, the ink becomes unmixed! The demonstration seems to defy thermodynamics in that it appears that entropy decreases, but in actuality the reversible mixing is made possible by insuring that the mixing/unmixing is done without turbulence.

How it works:

The space between two, transparent and concentric...

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Hot and Cold Gas in Balloons

A balloon is dropped in boiling water, and another balloon is cooled with liquid nitrogen to demonstrate the effect of temperature on volume of gas in a balloon.

A 4 liter beaker on a hot plate, with a liter of water boiling within. A prepared balloon, filled with air and tied so that it just fits in the beaker, is dropped into the beaker. The balloon expands to seal the beaker and is forced up by the vapor pressure, ending up on top of the beaker, too large to fit inside.

A foam ice bucket will hold a helium ballon that is large enough to seal around the inside of the bucket...

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Bernoulli's Principle

What it shows

The relative velocities of two sides of a spinning ball to an oncoming wind creates a pressure difference and therefore a net force on the ball perpendicular to the air flow.

figure 1. Direction of motion of ball due to pressure difference

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Karate Blow

The instructor breaks several boards with a swift blow of the hand.

What it shows:

The impulse momentum theorem is demonstrated in a most dramatic way by breaking several boards with the blow of your fist. You need not be a karate expert to show how the force of a well executed hammer-fist strike will easily break a stack of five to eight boards. The impulse is given by

impulse = F∆t = ∆mv

The point of the demonstration is: the greater the speed, the smaller ∆t will be and thus the greater the force.

...

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Fracture Strength of Chalk

What it shows:

This demonstration allows you to compare chalk’s compressive strength with its tensile strength.

How it works:

We use railroad chalk, which although being softer and harder to work, is nice and big and easy to see. A sample is placed in each of the two types of testing assembly (details in Setting it Up), and loads carefully applied. Railroad chalk has a tensile strength of 195kNm-2 ± 30kNm-2 (a load of 2.5 to 3.5kg) and a compressive strength of 500kNm-2 ± 65kNm-2 ( a load of 7 to 9kg).

...

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Inverted Pendulum

A physical pendulum finds stability in its inverted position when driven at the proper frequency and amplitude combination.

How it works

The physical pendulum is a 45 cm x 2 cm x 6 mm (1/4") strip mounted on a ball-bearing pivot and can...

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