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Physics Demonstrations and Equipment

Physics Demonstrations and Equipment

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Orange foam ball wrapped in blue netting attached to a white cord, with a 9V battery and buzzer wires shown separately on a gray surface

Trajectory of Swinging Ball

Demonstrates that objects in circular motion travel in a straight line tangent to the circle when released, directly illustrating Newton's First Law. Corrects the common misconception that released objects fly …

Basswood strip supported at each end on wooden blocks, bending visibly under a brass mass with hook placed at center

Normal Force

A flexible basswood strip bends visibly under load, showing that normal forces arise from elastic deformation of the supporting material. Heavier masses produce greater deflection, making the connection between deformation …

Lecture bench with pulley clamps at each end, wheeled cart with stacked blue lead bricks in center, white ropes running from the cart and bricks over the pulleys

Tricky Tension Problem

A cart with lead bricks stays in equilibrium with 3 kg hanging from each side, but slides when 6 kg hangs from one side and the other rope is anchored. …

Falling chimney apparatus: wooden base board with hinged stick propped up by a vertical support bar forming a triangle, yellow cup and ball bearing visible at the top end of the stick

Falling Chimney - Free-Fall Paradox

A hinged stick ("chimney") rotates faster than a ball bearing free-falls, so the cup at the end of the stick catches the ball. Students see that rotational acceleration can cause …

Diet Pepsi floats at the surface while regular Pepsi sits on the bottom of a large beaker filled with water

Density Sodas

Identical-looking soda cans float or sink depending on their average density relative to water. Students see that small compositional differences — sugar vs. artificial sweeteners — produce dramatically different buoyancy …

Agilent 33120A function generator on the lecture hall AV island, with BNC cable connected to the front panel output and RCA audio inputs visible on the AV system below

Two Source Sound Interference

Two speakers driven by a single function generator create an interference pattern that students explore by moving through the room. Students experience constructive and destructive interference directly, connecting path length …

Full setup: drum shell with fluorescent rubber membrane under UV panel light, with signal generator and amplifier on the right

Modes of a Drum

Visualizes 2D standing wave modes on a circular membrane driven by a speaker. A fluorescent rubber sheet under UV light reveals nodal patterns as the driving frequency is swept, connecting …

Honeywell portable potentiometer in a wooden case, showing rotary dials, decade selector knobs, and a center-zero galvanometer on the front panel

Commercial Potentiometer

Students examine commercial potentiometers to see how null-balance techniques enable precise voltage measurement without drawing current from the source. These instruments make voltage division and null detection tangible in a …

Horseshoe-shaped radar magnet mounted on a turntable between two ring stands, with a pickup coil suspended between the pole pieces and a connecting box on the table

Barkhausen Effect

Students hear direct auditory evidence that magnetization is not a smooth process. As a magnet rotates near a ferromagnetic core, discrete domain wall jumps induce voltage pulses in a pickup …

Black ring with perpendicular threads forming crosshairs, mounted on ring stand with hanging weights for tension. Through the ring, the real inverted image of a colorful letter card (C visible) is seen superimposed on the crosshairs, with the convex lens on a stand visible behind.

Crosshairs on Image

Crosshairs positioned at the real image plane of a converging lens remain fixed relative to image features when viewed from different angles, proving the real image exists at a specific …

Orange origami paper square with fold creases on dark background, appearing bright and saturated

Color Perception

Demonstrates that color perception depends on surrounding context, not just wavelength. The same orange paper appears bright orange against black but brown against white, showing that the brain interprets color …

Two pink Silly Putty figures on a gray surface: a short, proportionate figure with bowler hat and smile (left) and the same figure stretched tall and thin (right)

Spaghettification

Demonstrates spaghettification — the stretching of objects by tidal forces near a black hole. Students see how differential gravity across an extended body produces elongation along the radial direction and …

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12 new demos

Heavy metal cylindrical X-ray mirror assembly with two main sections joined by flanges, sitting on a green surface

X-Ray Focusing Mirror

A Wolter Type I grazing-incidence X-ray reflector. Students learn why conventional optics cannot focus X-rays and how paired paraboloidal-hyperboloidal mirrors at grazing incidence achieve X-ray focusing for space telescopes like …

Infrared camera display panel wrapped in clear plastic with blue tape on edges, sitting on a table

Infrared Astronomy

Shows how IR imaging reveals objects invisible to optical cameras and penetrates fog/dust clouds that block visible light. Students learn why IR telescopes are essential for observing cool objects, star-forming …

Heavy metal disk with holographic rainbow surface sitting flat on a concave mirrored base with black rim

Euler's Disk: The Sound of Colliding Neutron Stars

A spinning Euler's disk produces a rising-pitch "chirp" as friction dissipates its energy — strikingly similar to the gravitational wave signal from merging neutron stars. Students hear how energy loss …

Three crocheted fabric models in variegated blue and green yarn: a flat disk (zero curvature), a ruffled hyperbolic surface (negative curvature), and a dome-shaped spherical cap (positive curvature)

Curved Space Models

Three crocheted cloth models in CMB-inspired colors represent universes with positive, negative, and zero spatial curvature. Students handle the models to build intuition for non-Euclidean geometry and connect curvature to …

Four flashing LEDs hanging from clips on an orange braided bungee cord at even intervals, positioned above a meter stick on a green lecture bench

Expanding Universe

Flashing LEDs on a stretching bungee cord model cosmic expansion. Students observe that all inter-LED distances increase proportionally when the cord is stretched, directly demonstrating Hubble's Law and showing that …

Glass bowls of various sizes containing sorted colored marbles — clear, yellow-green, orange, and blue-purple — with a small beaker of mixed marbles and a white mesh bag holding marbles

Stellar Generations

Models stellar nucleosynthesis using colored marbles to show how successive generations of stars enrich the interstellar medium with heavier elements. Students see why our Sun contains ~2% heavy elements — …

Black spandex sheet with white dot grid stretched between bike wheel rims, with a glass marble at center creating a depression and a wooden triangular launcher at the left edge; colored marbles are scattered on the sheet

Gravitational Lensing

Marbles rolling across a stretched rubber sheet demonstrate how massive objects curve spacetime and deflect light paths. Students observe that deeper curvature (heavier central mass) produces stronger deflection, and that …

Neoprene sheet with yellow dot grid stretched between bicycle wheel rims with spring clamps, marble launcher held at right, colored marbles and foam-tipped rod on sheet

Singularity

A stretched rubber sheet provides a 2D analog of spacetime curvature from General Relativity. Students observe marbles traveling straight lines on a flat sheet, then curved geodesic paths when the …

Two pink Silly Putty figures on a gray surface: a short, proportionate figure with bowler hat and smile (left) and the same figure stretched tall and thin (right)

Spaghettification

Demonstrates spaghettification — the stretching of objects by tidal forces near a black hole. Students see how differential gravity across an extended body produces elongation along the radial direction and …

Clear shallow glass bowl, transparent plastic pitcher of water, and a tin of ground black pepper on a gray surface

Motion in Interstellar Clouds

Pepper sprinkled on freshly poured water exhibits random motion that quickly organizes into coherent rotation, modeling how interstellar gas clouds develop net angular momentum from initially disordered motion. Illustrates the …

Red Giant

Illustrates the dramatic size changes during stellar evolution using scaled physical objects: a 1-meter weather balloon (red giant), a marble (Sun), and a ballpoint pen tip (white dwarf). Students see …

Gray metal stool on a wooden rotating platform, with two blue-handled flashlights inserted through holes in the stool seat

Rotating Table Pulsar

Models a pulsar's lighthouse effect using rotating flashlights. Students learn that pulsars emit continuously but appear to pulse because their beamed radiation sweeps past Earth's line of sight — a …

Popular with Faculty

12 demos

$Spectroscopy cart in a darkened room with all discharge tubes lit vertically, and their diffracted spectra visible to the right — discrete line spectra and continuous spectra from different sources$

Spectroscopy Cart

Students view discrete emission line spectra from multiple gas discharge tubes using handheld diffraction gratings. Provides direct visual evidence for quantized energy levels and element-specific spectral fingerprints.

FLIR camera display showing false-color thermal image of an ice cube tray (cold, dark) and activated heat pack (hot, bright), with spot temperature 23.9°C and scale from -7.0 to 46.5°C

Infrared Camera

An infrared camera reveals thermal radiation from everyday objects, showing that all objects emit electromagnetic radiation and that materials have strikingly different optical properties in the infrared vs. visible spectrum. …

Colored shadows on a projection screen showing three overlapping circles in yellow, cyan, and magenta, with secondary overlaps in red, green, and blue, and a dark center where all three shadows overlap

Primary Color Floodlights

Demonstrates additive color mixing using red, green, and blue floodlights. Students observe that overlapping primary-colored lights produce secondary colors (cyan, magenta, yellow) and white, contrasting with the subtractive mixing they …

Five parallel light rays from a ray projector on the left passing through a biconcave (diverging) lens mounted on a magnetic board, diverging outward on the right side

Blackboard Optics Lenses

Uses a multiple-ray projector on a magnetic board to show ray behavior through converging and diverging lenses. Students see focal points, ray tracing rules, compound lens systems, and aberrations in …

Magneto generator on wooden board with glowing frosted incandescent bulb on left, yellow wires connecting through central switch, hand visible on crank

Telephone Ringer

Students experience the connection between mechanical work and electrical power by cranking a magneto generator to light different bulbs. The dramatic difference in cranking effort between a 25W incandescent bulb …

Linear generator apparatus: copper coil with clear plastic guard plates on a metal handle mounted to a clamp stand, positioned between the poles of a large black radar magnet on a wooden cart with wheels. A miniature lamp in a base is connected by wires on the left.

Hand-Held Linear Generator

Demonstrates Faraday's Law by generating visible current through relative motion between a coil and magnet. A hand-held 1364-turn coil oscillated through a radar magnet's poles lights a miniature lamp, with …

Magnetic field projectual (sealed clear plastic tray with iron filings and glass stirring rod) resting on a surface with two bar magnets underneath showing field patterns

Magnetic Slides

Iron filings in a sealed projectual reveal magnetic field line patterns around various bar magnet configurations. Students observe how field geometry depends on magnet arrangement and how field line density …

Crushing coil wrapped in fiberglass and tape atop the apparatus, surrounded by several crushed Pepsi cans showing various degrees of compression

Electromagnetic Can Crusher

A high-voltage capacitor discharge through a coil induces powerful eddy currents in an aluminum can. By Lenz's law, the induced currents repel the coil's field with enough force to crush …

Hands rubbing a green water balloon with black felt cloth while a blue balloon hangs from a string nearby

Charged Balloons

Suspended balloons are charged by rubbing with felt (negative) or against a Teflon disk (positive) to demonstrate electrostatic attraction and repulsion. The separation angle provides a qualitative measure of the …

Assortment of fixed capacitors on a lavender surface: large motor-run can, oil-filled metal case, yellow 47 MFD 600V film cap, dissected rolled-foil capacitor, brown ceramic feedthrough, large black electrolytic, and several smaller axial and radial components

Fixed and Variable Capacitors

Displays a collection of commercial fixed and variable capacitors to show how geometry, dielectric material, and voltage rating affect capacitance and physical size. Students see that capacitance does not correlate …

$Single light ray refracting through a tilted rectangular plexiglass block mounted on paper on the blackboard, with ray projector visible at left edge$

Blackboard Optics Refraction at Flat Surfaces

Students observe how light rays bend when entering and exiting transparent plexiglass blocks, verifying Snell's Law quantitatively by tracing rays on paper. The setup also demonstrates total internal reflection and …

Blurred 2×4 rotating on green platform atop wooden stand, hand holding white charging rod near one end of the board

2 x 4 Electroscope -- Versorium

A 6-foot 2x4 balanced on an inverted watch glass rotates to follow a charged rod, demonstrating that charged objects attract neutral objects regardless of charge sign. Dramatically illustrates electrostatic induction …