Search Results

In this collection of demonstrations, learners explore Newton's Laws of Motion.

If a sailboat is stranded because there is no wind, is it possible to set up a fan on deck and blow wind into the sail to make the boat move?

In this activity, learners build inexpensive pulley assemblies from pulley wheels used for sliding screen door replacement or from clothesline spreaders.

In this activity, a spinning bicycle wheel resists efforts to tilt it and point the axle in a new direction.

In this activity, learners use a laser pointer and two small rotating mirrors to create a variety of fascinating patterns, which can be easily and dramatically projected on a wall or screen.

In this physics activity, learners recreate Galileo's famous experiment, in which he dropped a heavy weight and a light weight from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa to show that both weights fall

In this activity about electricity and magnetism, learners examine what happens when a magnet exerts a force on a current-carrying wire.

In this physics activity, learners construct a small-scale version of a classic carnival game.

In this activity, learners discover that two pendulums suspended from a common support will swing back and forth in intriguing patterns, if the support allows the motion of one pendulum to influence t

In this activity, learners use a laser pointer and two small rotating mirrors to create a variety of fascinating patterns, which can be easily and dramatically projected on a wall or screen.

Wheels aren't the only things that can "roll" objects that are placed on top of it. Make non-intuitive shapes from cutouts and a compass to demonstrate this.

In this demonstration, learners explore a variation of a Foucault pendulum, but upside down.

In this optics activity, learners examine how polarized light can reveal stress patterns in clear plastic.

In this activity, learners make a black box device that serves as an excellent analogy to Rutherford's famous experiment in which he deduced the existence of the atomic nucleus.

In this physics crime lab or demonstration, learners pretend they are criminologists and must find the "muzzle velocity" (speed of the bullet as it leaves the gun) of a gun used to commit a crime.

In this activity related to magnetism and electricity, learners observe as two parallel, current-carrying wires exert forces on each other.

This is an activity about friction as well as kinetic and potential energy.

In this demonstration, learners investigate mass, gravity, and acceleration by dropping a wooden bar with a balloon attached to its underside, a mass suspended from it by rubber bands, and a sharp-poi

In this activity, learners use plastic water bottles, wood, and water to build an inexpensive and portable tool to demonstrate one atmosphere of pressure at sea level.

In this activity, learners build a Wilberforce Pendulum, a special coupled pendulum in which energy is transferred between two modes of vibration, longitudinal ("bounce') and torsional ("twist"), on a