Smoke cell under microscope; smoke particles seen bombarded by air molecules.

What it Shows

Brownian motion shows direct evidence of the incessant motion of matter due to thermal energy. Here we use the random bombardment of smoke particles by air molecules.

How it Works

The CENCO Brownian Movement Apparatus consists of a metal chamber with a glass viewing window on top and a lens on one side (see figure 1). Smoke from a piece of smoldering rope or match is drawn into the chamber through an inlet tube by squeezing the rubber bulb....

What it Shows

Hot fluid rises, cool fluid sinks. Here is a desktop convection cell modeling the processes in the atmosphere, oceans or stellar interiors.

What it shows:

The demonstration shows density fluctuations in liquids. These fluctuations are particularly spectacular near critical points. A binary fluid mixture of methanol (29% by weight) and cyclohexane (71%) becomes opalescent when heated up to its critical temperature (about 45˚C) ... the fluids become miscible above this temperature.

How it works:

The two fluids are sealed in a special vial, able to withstand elevated pressure. The fluids are immiscible at room temperature. When brought up to 45˚C, they become miscible...

Observation of phase changes with corresponding pressure changes.

A two ml. plastic microcentrifuge vial and a small shop vise are used together to melt dry ice.

Wear safety glasses for this demo. The vial can explode, or shoot out of the vice, from the pressure of liquid carbon dioxide. Set up a camera with a close shot of an empty vial before putting in a loaded vial.

Crush a pellet of dry ice to make pieces that fit into the vial. Place a couple of pieces in the vial, and snap the lid closed.

Immediately place the vial horizontally in the jaws of the vice,...

Pure water cooled to below 273K without freezing; seeded to spontaneously crystallize.

What it shows:

A liquid can be taken to a temperature below its freezing point if it is cooled slowly and there are no nucleation sites for crystallization to begin. In this demonstration you can create a flask of liquid water at below 0°C that, when 'seeded' by the introduction of a nucleation site (in this case dry ice) will be instantaneously frozen.

How it works:

This is pretty much described in Setting it Up.

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What it shows:

This block of uranium is of great historical significance -- it is a remnant of the WWII German Atomic Bomb Project. It was brought to Harvard by Prof. Edwin C. Kemble, Physics Dept. Chairman and also Deputy Science Director of the ALSOS mission in 1945. The American ALSOS mission was an intelligence effort to discover the extent of German progress toward atomic weapon development and its ultimate purpose was to secure all the uranium ore the Germans had confiscated during the war and finally close the books on the German program to build an atom...

What it shows:

Radiations originating from atomic and nuclear processes are classified into four types:

charged particulate radiation consisting of
1. heavy charged particles (α)
2. fast electrons (β)
uncharged radiation consisting of
3. electromagnetic radiation (γ, x-ray)
4. neutrons (n)

The interaction processes of each type of radiation explain their penetrability through matter, their difficulty or ease of detection, and their danger to biological organisms. The interactions of these radiations with matter are unique and the...

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

What it Shows

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

Different colors of LED light illuminate a small corked test tube with no reaction. Ultraviolet light causes an explosion that shoots the cork across the room.

What it shows:

Certain materials (sugar in this experiment) are optically active because the molecules themselves have a twist in them. When linearly polarized light passes through an optically active material, its direction of polarization is rotated. The angle of rotation depends on the thickness of the material and the wavelength of the light.

What it shows:

A linear polarizing filter followed by a quarter-wave plate whose slow and fast axes are at 45° to the axis of the polarizer becomes a circular polarizing filter, and incident unpolarized light emerges as circularly polarized light. This will not work if the order of the polarizer and wave plate is reversed. A quarter-wave plate converts circularly polarized light into linearly polarized light.

What it shows:

A birefringent substance will split unpolarized light into two polarized rays with different refractive indices and different velocities. A crystal of calcite demonstrates this phenomenon.

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What it shows:

A device to measure distances to an accuracy of fractions of the wavelength of light, it also provided the critical experiment for the non-existence of the ether and for the constancy of the speed of light in all inertial frames.

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What it shows:

Waves reflecting from two surfaces can interfere constructively and destructively. In this case it is light waves that are being reflected at glass/air and air/glass interfaces. The interference produces a concentric ring pattern of rainbow colors in white light, or dark and light rings in monochromatic light.

What it shows:

Light is refracted as it passes between two transparent materials of different refractive indices. If the materials are different, but the refractive indices are not, then the light rays are undeviated and the materials are optically indistinguishable.

How it works:

"And if you put a sheet of common white glass in water, still more if you put it in some denser liquid than water, it will vanish almost all together, because the light passing from water to glass is only slightly refracted or reflected or indeed...