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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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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When you blow up a balloon with your breath, you’re filling it with a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, and a little bit of carbon dioxide. And when you let go of it, it falls down to the floor. Why does it do this? And how could we prevent it from doing so? Think of it
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NASA has always been about accomplishing crazy. In the 1960s, the idea of people walking around on the moon was ludicrous, but NASA got them there anyways. Now, NASA is performing another crazy feat: sending a probe to an asteroid, collecting rock samples, and returning that probe to Earth. Additionally, the probe has created a
Read moreA common misconception we see at AstroCamp is how gravity and atmospheric pressure work. It makes sense! The two seem interchangeable at a glance, however they both get weaker as altitude increases, and there can’t even be an atmosphere without gravity. Despite their similarities, the two are very different. Gravity is a property of anything
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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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Every day, about 40 tons of space rocks reach the top of Earth’s atmosphere. These asteroids come in many different sizes and have been floating around in space for billions of years. Once they reach the Earth, however, they become meteors — more colloquially known as shooting stars. Friction with the air causes the rock
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At first glance, a Tippe Top looks like a normal spinning top. A few moments after you spin it however, the tippe top flips over and begins spinning on its thin stem, raising its center of mass upwards! This marvel of a toy stumped physicists and was popular among many well-known figures in the mid-1900s.
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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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Today is Earth Day! We spend this day celebrating Earth, raising awareness of things threatening the planet, and learning how to fix those problems! This year’s theme is plastic pollution and the threat it poses to humans and other life. Plastics can be very useful, but the huge amount that is discarded incorrectly and dangerously
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