The difference between static and kinetic friction can cause the car to skid when braking.
The automobile is a radio-contolled car (the same one we use for the Reactionary Roadbed). When the front wheels are locked so that they can't turn...
An image current is created in a ferromagnetic material in the presence of a real current.
The demonstration is a realization of problem 5.17 in J.D. Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics, 3rd ed, (John Wiley & Sons, 1999) p.229. To paraphrase...
If you're feeling pressure to do something fun, consider the vacuum cannon...
See slow-motion footage of the Vacuum Cannon in action (https://youtu.be/gex5Fq5oUtc)
Air rushing into an evacuated tube pushes a ping-pong ball down the...
The tension force in a rope grows exponentially with the number of turns the rope makes around a pole.
Many people have probably observed that, by wrapping a rope around a post, a person can hold in check a much larger force than would...
Show why objects float in a prefered orientation and why one hull shape is more stable than another.
Place a wooden stick or board into a fish tank in some random orientation and it will flip over and float in its prefered orientation. This...
Simple RL and RC circuits serve as high-pass and low-pass audio frequency filters.
Simple RL and RC circuits act as a passive high-pass and low-pass audio frequency filters. Their effect is clearly evident when listening to music (or white...
A pulse of sound gets "inverted" when reflecting off the open end of a pipe, but does not get inverted when reflecting off the closed end.
Due to an impedance mismatch, a sound pressure pulse traveling down the length of a pipe suffers a...
An empty aluminum soft drink can, placed inside a coil of wire, is made to implode when a capacitor is discharged through the coil.
A dramatic demonstration of Faraday induction and of the repulsion of oppositely directed electric currents...
Light, passing through heavy glass, has its direction of polarization rotated slightly if a magnetic field is applied to the glass.
In 1845, Michael Faraday discovered experimentally that a magnetic field can affect the polarization of light...
A new optical illusion has been added to our geometric optics repertoire: A combination of four converging lenses creates a 3D cloaking effect.
The demonstration is a replica of an experiment described by J.S. Choi and J.C. Howell (Univ of...
How does shielding work? Is it a two-way street and work both ways? Can electric fields not penetrate metals? What's going on? This sequence of demonstrations addresses these questions.
(1) Shielding the inside from the outside. It is well...
We have designed and built our own cosmic ray telescope (a.k.a. spark chamber). Unlike the old one, this one works reliably, is larger, and makes for a great demo.
In the 1960's and '70s, spark chambers were commonly used as detectors in particle physics...
