prague2007

Physics Teacher's Inventions Fair

Prague 2007

Learning Science by Doing Science

Paul Doherty, The Exploratorium

Scientists look at what everyone has looked at and see what no one has seen

Teachers help others to see what they have never seen before.

Students ask questions that help their teachers to see what they have never seen before.

The Exploratorium Website: www.exploratorium.edu

Paul Doherty's website: www.exo.net/~pauld

The virtual Exploratorium is named The Splo in the virtual world of Second Life,
Sploland 175,75,25

Main presentations.

Image Real and Virtual Look through a long focal length lens at a distant object and see both a real and a virtual image of the object simply by moving your head.

Finding rays Look at a small bright light source in a dimly look room, notice rays of light. Do experiments to find out where these rays are located.

Ringing Aluminum Rod Strike a rod and find its pattern of vibration with your fingers.

Floating in Copper Float a magnet between thick sheets of aluminum or copper.

Whirly Explore the sounds made by a corrugated plastic tube.

Additional experiments:

While I am attending the Physics Teachers Invention Fair I will be sharing many small experiments. Here are a few of them.

Laser Speckle, A white surface like that of a sheet of paper or a lightbulb appears to have light and dark spots on it when it is illuminated by laser light. These spots move in interesting ways.

Silent collisions: Magnets collide on a pencil without touching creating an elastic collision.

Audible magnetic domains, A coil of wire wrapped around an iron core can be attached to an audio amplifier which will make the changing magnetic domains audible....the Barkhausen effect.