Center of mass (COM) it’s easy balancing act or a trick to try at home! All you need is 2 forks, a quarter, a cup, and some patience. Why does this look so weird? It all has to do with center of mass. COM is hard to define, but almost everyone has a great intuition
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You’ve probably heard of liquid nitrogen ice cream before. It’s made by mixing together ice cream ingredients with liquid nitrogen, which turns into a gas at -321º F. Learn more about that at https://www.thoughtco.com/cryogenics-definition-4142815. The intense coldness is what turns the ice cream ingredients from a liquid to a tasty solid. So by this logic,
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Galileo once proposed that all objects under gravity, whether they’re really heavy or really light, will fall and accelerate downwards at the same rate. In a famous experiment, he supposedly dropped both from the Leaning Tower of Pisa and proved it. Why is this true? For something with more mass, it does feel a stronger
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September 27th is Crush A Can Day and it’s a day to serve as a reminder that we CAN recycle our aluminum CANS! We love recycling and we’ve got a hot way to do it, with the help of science. This is an experiment we recommend doing at home! All you need is a can,
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An Oudin coil can take the energy out of your outlet and create sparks you can see! It’s sometimes called a mini tesla coil. The sparks on them usually look violet. If you know the visible light spectrum, you might know that violet light is the most energetic color of light. The oudin coil looks
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A homopolar motor is a device that relies on flowing electricity, magnetic fields, and the interaction between the two. It consists of a voltage source, neodymium magnets, and a conductor that allows electricity to flow. And it’s super easy to make yourself! What you’ll need: 1 AA battery 2 neodymium magnets Thick copper wire ————
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If you’ve taken our Electricity and Magnetism class, you’ve seen this device before! You press a button and an electric arc rises to the top of two tall wires. This is the Jacob’s Ladder! But what’s happening here? The base of the Ladder is a transformer — a device that changes an incoming voltage. In
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Back in the early 1960s, a fledgling NASA was presented with lots of new problems. Going to space was unlike anything humans had ever done, and engineers and scientists were constantly searching for answers to issues they had never even considered before. One of these problems was dealing with the properties of a liquid in
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In the video above, I talk about how pendulums actually work. If you haven’t watched it, the principle is simple: an object is suspended from a fixed point and allowed to swing back and forth – the mass of the object and the time it takes to swing back and forth are independent of each
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CAUTION: This experiment uses a hot plate. Please use adult supervision if attempting to recreate. Bubbles are a great resource for fun and physics. They provide interesting insight for optimization and can even be used as models for atmospheres. Scientists are able to use bubbles as models for the atmosphere because they are very thin
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CAUTION: Antifreeze is a very powerful chemical that, if ingested, can cause serious illness or death. Do not attempt to use it without adult supervision. All appropriate safety precautions have been taken for the filming of this video. If you are from a colder part of the world, then you know how important antifreeze is.
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Water is usually pretty predictable. At standard pressures it will boil at 100˚C and freeze at 0˚C. However, under special circumstances it might surprise you. Dihydrogen monoxide can become supercooled, dropping below 0˚C while maintaining the liquid phase of matter. Here’s how: Acquire distilled or purified water. Fill an empty bottle with tap water (this
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