A Musically Shattering Physics Lesson

This has been done and shown a few times, but it is still fun to see it. This is from a 12th-grade physics lesson from a high school in Minnesota, and shows how a straightforward human voice can break a glass. This is of course a demonstration of resonant frequency.

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Neutrinos Could Probe Earth’s Structure

This is certainly an ambitious proposal, but not that outrageous in terms of implementation.

A group of physicists have proposed to use the atmospheric neutrinos to study the structure of our Earth.

Now, Concepcion Gonzalez-Garcia from the University of Barcelona in Spain and colleagues say that atmospheric neutrinos may have been dismissed too hastily. Their calculations show that, although the proportion of atmospheric neutrinos above the 10 TeV absorption criterion is low, the sheer number of them could make up for it (arXiv:0711.0745). “It would be better to have a localized beam rather than a disperse one, but the point is that there is no such localized beam in nature that is intense enough,” Gonzalez-Garcia told physicsworld.com.

They hope to detect these few events at IceCube, the neutrino detector project at the South Pole.

It sounds daunting, but who knows.

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Tetrahedral Kites

Here's a project you can build, and make a historical connection with Alexander Graham Bell (yes, THAT Bell). It's a tetrahedral kite that supposedly can fly. Follow one of the links in the article to a webpage that has instructions on how to build one.

Have fun!

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Science Fair Projects

I get very frequent questions on suggestions for science fair or physics projects, especially at the high school level. So I thought I should post a link in here of a place where a collection of science fair websites are posted. I'll also put this as one of the links for this blog.

Science Fair Projects

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Egg Drop Project

We often get questions regarding the egg-drop project or competition. This is where you have to find a way to drop and egg from a height without breaking it (of course). Some time, like in this competition, the student is constrained to what he/she can use.

I can see how this would engage the student into being creative and to make him/her consider various laws of physics. But does it really? Creative? Sure. But how much physics consideration and calculations were part of the student's conscious effort? I'd love to hear from students who have done such a thing to know if they had a better understanding of physics, and from teachers who have either organized or helped with such projects. Was there something really tangible that was accomplished as far as physics is concerned?

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