For the past twelve years, Dr. Mark
Croft, Professor of Physics at Rutgers, and David Maiullo, Physics
Support Specialist, have been putting on an exciting physics
demonstration show for kids around Christmas time. We went
last night and it was awesome!! Lots of excitement and
danger!!! And the kids got to sit in a real college lecture
hall which they thought was cool, too.
some of the wonderful experiments to
come
They made a fire ball from a
balloon filled with helium, crushed a steel oil drum, shattered
various objects that had been placed in liquid nitrogen, showed
us sound waves using fire, broke a beaker with sound, make a
magnet seem to fall in slow motion through a copper tube, and
propelled the professor across the room using a fire
extinguisher and roller skates. It was a lot of fun!!
Below are some clips from the presentation.
Newton's Law of Motion and
Roller Skates (4 minute mark)
Rotational Motion
Energy of Motion with
champagne and
wrecking balls
Sound Waves and Singing Rods
Sound Waves on Fire, too
see more on this click
here
Refraction and Density
Gases & Air Pressure
then there was a very loud bang
and the steel oil drum crushed onto itself
next various object that had been
dipped in liquid nitrogen were brought out and shattered with a
hammer - broccoli, banana, grapes, flowers, etc.
then they showed the Bernoulli
Effect where things move into the airstream and stay instead of
out of it like expected. You can read about this effect
and see more experiments
here.
Next they ran electricity through
and pickle and lit it up like a light bulb.
Then they talked about magnetism
and showed a cool effect of a magnet freefalling down a copper
tube. Eddy Currents. Very cool!
Dr. Croft then laid on a bed
of nails and then they put a bed of nails on top of him and
let kids step on him.
then Mark broke a cinder block on
Dr. Croft with a sledge hammer - ouch!
and then they demonstrated why it
all works
It was a night full of explosions
and wow moments and the kids loved it all! We all didn't want it
to end and wanted to go back and see it again but,
unfortunately, we chose to go the last day of the event and so
couldn't go back. Next year, we'll go earlier so we can go
back.
Great event Rutgers University Physics
Department!!!! Keep them coming! Science is so
exciting!! The kids were enthralled!!
Below is a link to an outline of
the presentation and links to other videos and simulations:
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