Physics experiment

Stan_Darsh

Stan_Darsh

Active member
i have to set up and conduct an experiment for physics, and present my findings to the class. anyone got any ideas for a simple, quick experiment?
 
drop a marble and then a heavier marble at the same height. Both will hit the ground at the same time unless they reach maximum velocity whereas the results will yeild he larger marble the victor. But yea by dropping two marbles of different size and weight off a table you will be emulating a famous experiment by Galileo. Cheap/simple/surprising/classic
 
make a coil out of wire, like wrap it around a cylinder a whole bunch of times, connect the end of the wire to a very small lightbulb purchased from radioshack or whatever

move a bar magnet through the coil and the bulb will light up as you do this

theory is electromagnetic induction
 
roll different round shaped objects down an inclined plane. Like a tube or a solid cylinder or a ball. They should roll at different speeds and stuff cause of the moment of inertia.
 
there are lots of cool electric circuits you can make as well

if you have access to a multimetre, make an LRC circuit (google it)

use 2 9V batteries for the power source, 5000 ohms resistor, a 1L inductor and a 1microFarad capacitor (all can be found at radioshack/circuit city)

charge the capacitor first, by connecting the terminals of the capacitor to a 9V battery for a second or so, then attach it in the circuit

use the multimetre to monitor the voltage over the resister, i assume you know how to use a multimetre

if you can't get a multimetre, use a small lightbulb instead of a resistor and look at the change in brightness

and to Itsbackfliptime, rolling speed is related to the diameter of the circle, not the moment of inertia here
 
find out what type of snow is best for snowballs. heres the answer: the stuff thats been out in the sun, not in the shade, cause its melted just enough to get some sticky water to hold it together. i did it in lik 5th grade, so it might not be physics material.
 
best one ever... it blows your mind but very simple

all the materials you need are two marbles of equal size and a table

push one marble hard off the edge of the table and at the same time that the marble leaves the table surface drop the second marble, if you time it right, they will both hit the ground at the same time. it shows that no matter what the Vi is, everything falls at the same rate.

if this doenst blow them away, take that experiment and put it in ebveryday life.

for example, when a gun is fired, the time for the bullet to hit the ground will be the amount of time it would take to drop a bullet from the barrel

it's pretty cool stuff
 
The double slit experiment, it shows the duality of wave and particle behavior of light. All you need is a laser, a mirror and some cardboard, its sick.
 
dude make an electromagnetic crane (mini) it will seriously take you like 10 minutes and your teacher will love it. im not gonna explain just google it and youll find something, all you have to do to present is like put some nails or paperclips into a jar.
 
take a pvc pipe and drill like 100 holes in it like 2 cms apart. then hoook up a buson burner to the tube, turn it on, light it. then play music with the speaker in the tube in one end. the flames will form a standing wave with diff amplitude, depending on the frequency. its the rubens tube. http://youtube.com/watch?v=RyIphO4Ypoo
 
If both were to reach maximum velocity the smaller marble would acheive a faster speed. Max velocity is based on surface area, not mass. In any experiement you would do in a class though, you obviously wouldn't have to worry about this.
 
1) get a copper pipe.

2) get a small strong magnet, preferably shaped like a cylinder shorter than its diameter.

3) demonstrate that the copper pipe is not a permanent magnet by holding the magnet up to it.

4) drop the magnet down the cylinder flat end up (probably, anyway, but it depends on your magnet... you want the north and south poles pointing up and down).

5) watch in amazement as the magnet slowly floats to the bottom of the pipe without touching the sides.

This is due to induced electrical currents in the copper pipe caused by the changing magnetic field flux through the pipe as the magnet falls. At this point, due to Lenz's law (i put it at the bottom if you're lazy), the magnetic field produced by these induced currents opposes the magnetic field of the magnet, causing it to float gently down the pipe (at least, that's more or less what happens... the math is not high school level)

This is the coolest, simplest physics demonstration i have seen. It's also fun to play with, even if you don't really understand what's going on.

Lenz's Law: "The emf induced in an electric circuit always acts in such a direction that the current it drives around the circuit opposes the change in magnetic flux which produces the emf."

If Lenz's law was the opposite of what it was, we would have free energy (the magnet would be pushed down the pipe by the magnetic field produced by the induced current caused by the magnet's own magnetic field changing the flux through the pipe and so on and so forth... force comes out of nowhere!) so it has to be that way. :)

It's been a while since I last did this stuff though so nazis may be able to point out some errors in what I said... but it's more or less right. Also I may have misworded something because there's a lot going on here.
 
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