NEWworkshop

Lecture for the National Educators Workshop, 15 Oct 2002

I presented many hands-on science explorations to High School.
Here are links the on-line versions of those activities.

Magnetic Tape make a digital magnetic tape recorder from pieces of cassette tape. (This activity is also in the book 'Square Wheels" by Paul Doherty and Don Rathjen.)

Magnetic Silent Collisions, collide two donut magnets on a pencil and see interesting things.

Magnetic Atmosphere Model, stack 5 magnets on a pencil and see density versus height for an atmosphere.

Magnetic Guide Rail, A slab of aluminum will guide a rolling disk magnet to roll along its center.

Floating in Copper, Eddy currents allow you to fly a magnet between two slabs of copper.

Spin a Koosh, Throw a spinning kooshball into the air to see the equatorial bulge of a planet.

Spoon Rattleback, Bend a soup spoon and start it spinning, it will stop spinning then reverse direction in seeming violation of the law of conservation of angular momentum.

Drop a Slinky,The top of a slinky held by its top and then dropped falls faster than the acceleration of gravity. Here is magazine article I wrote on this topic. Falling faster than g

Floating Coins, Float aluminum coins on the surface tension of water using a plastic fork.

Two Head Harp , wrap a head with one turn of string and pluck the string to study musical resonance of strings and their dependence on tension.

Whirly, explore the singing tones of a corrugated plastic tube.

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