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.
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.
Thomas Edison may have invented the first commercially practical light bulb and popularized the usage of electricity, but Nikola Tesla made our modern electrical infrastructure possible.
In the late 1800′s Thomas Edison founded the Edison Illumination Company, which provided electricity to a small number of customers in Manhattan. The electricity was transmitted as 110 volts of DC current and thus could only be transmitted about two miles. Tesla introduced a new system, called alternating current, which allowed the power to be transmitted over longer distances by stepping up the voltage of the electricity with transformers. Without this new system, it would not have been economical to run national power grids because there would have to be a generating station every few miles.
Infrared light is a type of electromagnetic radiation that has a longer wavelength than visible light. Despite the fact that it’s invisible, it is actually all around us all the time. The interesting thing, is that a digital camera with a CCD in it (most digital cameras use them) can see infrared. In fact they are so good at seeing it, that digital cameras actually incorporate an infrared filter to prevent interference.
Tv remote controls use infrared light to send signals to the tv. While they are invisible to the naked eye, a digital camera (even one with the IR filter still in place) can see them. See the video demonstration here.
This week will be the last Science Friday workshop that Lorenzo and I do before taking a break to deal with the back to school rush. As such we want to go out with a bang and some of our experiments will actually do so.
One of the experiments that we are going to do deals with sodium acetate, an industrial byproduct commonly used in reusable hand warmers. It would be easy enough to go get some hand warmers and cut them open, but I decided to try making some myself first, if only to say that I had. I cooked the ingredients over a camp stove in an old coffee can as I couldn’t positively say that the experiment wouldn’t mess up my mom’s pots. The picture above shows the solution as I as boiling it down.
So far my attempts have failed, though this might have had to do with the fact that I miss measured the baking soda. I will try again tomorrow.
It took me three tries, but I got a batch that seems to work. Unfortunately, it crystallized while cooling, so I had to melt it down again. Hopefully, it will still be good when it cools.
Update Again:
I remelted the sodium acetate that I had and it didn’t work after that. So Science friday went on without it. We did some stuff with baking soda and vineagar as well as Alka-Seltzer rockets. It was still a success.
