okay here’s the deal, i’m in this physics class and we are supposed to make some sort of machine that demonstrates a principle of physics. i need some help thinking of something to do. i don’t really want to do the same old thing as everyone else (potato gun, simple hovercraft, etc.) so i was wondering if you dopers might have some ideas for me. REMEMBER, nothing that’s going to cost me a ton of money to make, and nothing too complicated, but also not too simple. thanks for your time.
OH yeah…ur not helping me cheat by the way, we just have to MAKE and EXPLAIN the machine, it doesn’t have to be our own invention or idea.
Could you make one of those “incredible machine” type deals? You know, where something drops, causing something else to spin, which causes a lighter to turn on, which burns a rope, which releases a…
I don’t know anything about physics, but I do like those machines!
i guess i could do something like that, but i’ve always thought of things like that as pointless and having WAY too many unnecessary complications…give u an example, in 8th grade i had to create a “Rube Goldberg” machine (some might know what that is for everyone else don’t worry about it, doesn’t really matter) but the objective was to create a machine that had something ridiculous such as 15 steps before it completed its final task. i made a huge stupid pointless machine that did a whole bunch of stuff before it turned off an alarm clock…sorry, but i prefer reaching and pressing myself
I suggest a perpetual motion machine that demonstrates Newton’s Fourth Law of Motion.
idol mind, what are some laws of physics that you like? I personally think something with optics could be kind of cool, but maybe you’re more of a thermo person.
Hey, if you think others will be building potato guns, then you could build a ballistic pendulum and use it to measure the muzzle velocities of their potatoes. That could be fun (in the my-god-I’m-a-geek sort of way ) Or you could get high-tech about it and build a cronograph out of light sensors and a bit of circuitry. Or do both and see if they give the same answer
Or you could build machines to answer such sdmb favourites as how much water do you need to float an aircraft carrier?', how do rowboats work?’, and `does a duck’s quack echo?’
I dunno. Do you have a favourite field of physics? It’s a somewhat broad subject without that…
How about an ornithopter, I grant you THIS BIRD not only has a great potential as a physics demostrator, but it´s FUN! I´ve built two so far and I´m telling you that when you make it fly inside a room no-one will miss it. You can explain how the power is stored, the mechanics of the levers, how lift and thrust are generated, etc.
Is a potatoe gun like an orange gun? Piece of plastic piping with a chamber at the end (normally a T-section plumbing junction) into which, a BBQ gas lighter is fitted, an orange is squished down the barrel, some hair spray squirted into the chamber and the BBQ sparker gets sparked.
BOOOM!
oooooorrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnggggge
You could build a probability machine, although that may be more of a Mathematics demonstrator than Physics. I can’t find a great picture of one, but try these links.
Essentially, it’s a narrow box with pegs running through it in a grid pattern (and plexiglass sides so you can see what’s happening inside). Balls are dropped into the box from the top center, bounce off the pegs on their way down (think “Plinko” from The Price is Right) and collect in bins at the bottom. Drop enough balls through the machine and the bins will form a bell curve, lots of balls in the center bin and very few on either end.
The idea is that any one event is unpredictable (when a ball hits a peg as it’s dropping through the machine, it can fall to the left or right, 50-50), but the net result of lots of events always generates the standard curve. As I said, it’s more Mathematics than Physics. But I have yet to see a Plinko contestant with even the faintest clue about this.
Once for open house in high school, my friend and I programmed the CS lab with some nifty QBASIC games, and built an electrostatic motor out of pop bottles using the Van de Graaff in the Physics lab. Sadly, the motor needed more debugging than the code did, so don’t count on it working amazingly first time.
Water vortices? (A tank, a pump, some rocks and a bunch of glitter)
Ooo! Totally out to lunch: Demo streamlining testing. They take a shape, stick it in a wind-tunnel, and release different coloured paint onto the front one after another. The swirling paint on the skin shows how air is passing over it. All you need is a big fan, some tempura paint, and a way to explain the huge mess.
