This is a Tornado Chamber I built for one of our Science Saturday workshops. Air enters the box through the two slits in the side and exits through the hole in the top. The positioning of the slits sets up a clockwise vortex inside the box (the rotation of the air in the box should be in the same direction as the blades of the fan). The window is made of some extra lamination film and allows a view into the box while still keeping air out. When the dry ice is put in the cup of hot water, it creates fog which subsequently follows the circular path of the air, thus creating the tornado.
Air pressure. We experience it every day. For those of us living around sea level, we must endure 14.9 pounds pushing down on every square inch of our bodies. Of course, since the air is also pushing in every other direction, we don’t feel it at all.
Due to the fact that we experience air pressure on a daily basis, we at Thematic Attic decided it would be an excellent topic to cover in one of our Science Saturday workshops, specifically using hover craft.
One of the demonstrations that I came up with for the workshop was a paper plate hovercraft. I built it out of a large 12 volt computer fan that was placed over a hole in a paper plate. I happened to have a generic transformer that could deliver 12 volts and so, with a little soldering, I had a way to power the fan indefinately. Voila! A Hover Craft
In retrospect, I would consider going with a smaller fan since this one seemed to lose a lot of air straight up through the fan. However, it was able to force and keep enough air under the plate to lift the edges and allow it to float across the table.
In researching this project I saw several articles on how to make a ride-able hover craft out of some plywood and a leaf blower. Coincidentally enough, this showed up in my living room a couple days later…
Two Glow Sticks, one was broken normally and the other was cut open and the liquids mixed in a small bottle.
Glow sticks have become an extremely common trick or treating accessory. They are perfect for increasing the visibility of kids because they are safe, easy to use, and have an awesome spooky glow to them.
Most everyone has used a glow stick at some point or another, but have you ever wondered how they work? The answer lies in a simple chemical reaction.
The basic structure of a glow stick consists of a flexible plastic tube that contains a clear slightly oily substance (i’m not entirely sure what it is, but i’ve heard reports of it being some sort of ethyl group) and a glass ampule with hydrogen peroxide and a fluorescent dye. When you bend the stick, the glass breaks and the two chemicals are allowed to mix. This starts a chemical reaction that causes the stick to glow, an effect called Chemoluminescence.
Tonic water is a liquid that it often used as a mix in for alcoholic drinks, but did you know that it was originally used to prevent malaria? As the European powers colonized South Asia and and Africa, they began encountering new diseases such as malaria that caused much pain and suffering.
One of the solutions to the malaria epidemics was quinine, which was known to help ease the symptoms. However, quinine is extremely bitter and so it was diluted in water to create tonic water. In modern times, tonic water isn’t used as a cure or prevention of malaria, but that is how it began, as a medicine to prevent malaria.
An interesting note: tonic water glows blue under a black light, due to the quinine in it.
I was browsing Dark Roasted Blend and came across an article about an interesting toy called a Gomboc. The Gomboc has only one point of stable equilibrium and one point of unstable equilibrium, resulting in the Gomboc rolling around when placed on a flat surface.
In 1628 the Swedish navy sent their newest warship out on her maiden voyage. Upon leaving the harbor, the ship promptly heeled over and and sank to the ocean floor taking 30 to 50 of her sailors with her.
The reason for the sinking of the Vasa was her extremely unstable design. She was built too narrow with too little ballast and too much weight on the top. The instability of the design was quite obvious during stability tests of the new ship, but no one was willing to point it out to the king, thus allowing the ship to sail when it was obvious that she shouldn’t.
After a few attempts at raising her, the location of the Vasa was lost and she was not rediscovered until 1956. Finally, in 1961, the Vasa was raised and placed in the Vasa Museum in Sweden where she can be visited by the general public.
Every day we use water from the tap, from our sinks and showers, our hoses and washing machines. What few people know about this water is that it is actually treated with flourosilicic acid. This flouridation of the water is designed to help prevent tooth decay among the general population in a similar manner to the iodizing of salt.
In late 2006, a Nasa probe, called Deep Impact, collided with the Tempel 1 comet. The resulting outgassing lasted for 13 days and released between 33 and 66 million pounds of matter.
The Deep Impact mission was instituted to learn more about the chemical makeup of comets. The spacecraft was made up of two parts, the flyby section and the impactor. The impactor hit the comet with the same force as an explosion of five tons of dynamite. The flyby section then flew through the plume of debris and collected data about it. The data was later radioed back to earth for analysis. The impactor also had a camera and recorded images until about 3 seconds before impact.
Nitroglycerin is extremely dangerous to work with, it explodes from even small physical shocks, and over time it becomes even more unstable.
In 1867, Alfred Nobel combined Nitroglycerin with diatomaceous earth to create a mixture known as dynamite. In addition to being used for mining and construction purposes, dynamite became a widely used tool of death and destruction.
In 1888, a french newspaper incorrectly printed a obituary about Nobel, who hadn’t yet died. The article harshly condemned him for creating a more efficient method of killing. This article had such an effect on Nobel that when he died he established the Nobel Prize to honor those who have made significant contributions to science.
…On the Moon. At the end of the Apollo 15 mission, immediately prior to returning to their spacecraft, astronauts David Scott and James Irwin performed a short experiment to prove that Galileo Galilei was correct in his theory that objects in a vacuum fall at the same rate regardless of their mass.
The experiment involved dropping a geology hammer and a falcon feather at the same time and seeing which one hit the surface first. On earth the hammer will always hit the ground first, but on the moon, where the atmosphere is all but nonexistent, both hit the ground at the same time. The actual cause for the disparity on earth is air resistance, not a difference in mass. Linked is a video of the experiment taken from the surface of the moon.
