Sign in  |  Register
Advanced search
Publication Cover

CITATION

Silver, Jerry. 125 Physics Projects for the Evil Genius. US: McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics, 2009.

125 Physics Projects for the Evil Genius

Authors: Jerry Silver

Published:  March 2009

eISBN: 9780071626071 0071626077 | ISBN: 9780071621311
Open eBook
  • Contents
  • Introduction
  • Section 1 Motion
  • Project 1 Getting started. Constant velocity. Running the gauntlet.
  • Project 2 Picturing motion. Getting a move on.
  • Project 3 The tortoise and the hare. Playing catch-up.
  • Project 4 How does a sailboat sail against the wind? Components of force.
  • Project 5 Stepping on the gas.
  • Project 6 Rolling downhill. Measuring acceleration.
  • Project 7 Independence of horizontal and vertical motion. Basketball tossed from a rolling chair.
  • Project 8 Target practice. Horizontal projectile—rolling off a table.
  • Project 9 Taking aim. Shooting a projectile at a target.
  • Project 10 Monday night football. Tracking the trajectory.
  • Project 11 Monkey and coconut.
  • Section 2 Going Around in Circles
  • Project 12 What is the direction of a satellite's velocity?
  • Project 13 Centripetal force. What is the string that keeps the planets in orbit?
  • Project 14 A gravity well. Following a curved path in space.
  • Project 15 How fast can you go around a curve? Centripetal force and friction.
  • Project 16 Ping-pong balls racing in a beaker. Centripetal force.
  • Project 17 Swinging a pail of water over your head.
  • Section 3 Gravity
  • Project 18 Feather and coin.
  • Project 19 How fast do things fall?
  • Project 20 The buck stops here (the falling dollar). Using a meterstick to measure time.
  • Project 21 Weightless water. Losing weight in an elevator.
  • Project 22 What planet are we on? Using a swinging object to determine the gravitational acceleration.
  • Section 4 Force and Newton's Law
  • Project 23 Newton's first law. What to do if you spill gravy on the tablecloth at Thanksgiving dinner.
  • Project 24 Newton's first law. Poker chips, weight on a string, and a frictionless puck.
  • Project 25 Newton's second law. Forcing an object to accelerate.
  • Project 26 Newton's third law. Equal and opposite reactions.
  • Project 27 Newton's third law. Bottle rockets. Why do they need water? (Sir Isaac Newton in the passenger's seat.)
  • Project 28 Pushing water. Birds flying inside a truck.
  • Project 29 Slipping and sliding.
  • Project 30 Springs. Pulling back. The further you go, the harder it gets.
  • Project 31 Atwood's machine. A vertical tug of war.
  • Project 32 Terminal velocity. Falling slowly.
  • Project 33 Balancing act. Painter on a scaffold.
  • Project 34 Hanging sign.
  • Project 35 Pressure. Imploding cans.
  • Project 36 Pressure. Supporting water in a cup.
  • Project 37 Pressure. Sometimes the news can be pretty heavy.
  • Project 38 Archimedes's principle. What floats your boat?
  • Project 39 Cartesian diver.
  • Project 40 An air-pressure fountain.
  • Project 41 Blowing up a marshmallow. Less is s'more. Why astronauts do not use shaving cream in space.
  • Project 42 Relaxing on a bed of nails.
  • Project 43 Blowing hanging cans apart. What Bernoulli had to say about this.
  • Project 44 Center of mass. How to balance a broom.
  • Project 45 A simple challenge. Move your fingers to the center of a meterstick.
  • Project 46 Center of gravity. How far can a stack of books extend beyond the edge of a table?
  • Project 47 Center of mass. The leaning tower of pizza.
  • Section 5 Energy/Momentum
  • Project 48 The pendulum and your physics teacher's Ming dynasty vase.
  • Project 49 Two slopes. Different angle, same height.
  • Project 50 Racing balls. The high road versus the low road. Which wins?
  • Project 51 Linear momentum. Where can you find a perfect 90-degree angle in nature?
  • Project 52 Elastic collisions.
  • Project 53 Inelastic collision. Sticking together.
  • Project 54 Impulse and momentum. Eggstreme physics.
  • Project 55 Using gravity to move a car.
  • Project 56 How can CSI measure muzzle velocity? The ballistic pendulum.
  • Project 57 Angular momentum. Riding a bike.
  • Project 58 Moment of inertia. Ice skaters and dumbbells.
  • Project 59 What caused Voyager to point in the wrong direction?
  • Project 60 Moment of inertia. The great soup can race or that's how I roll.
  • Project 61 Making waves. I thought I node this.
  • Project 62 Rolling uphill.
  • Project 63 Getting around the loop. From how far above the ground does the roller coaster need to start?
  • Section 6 Sound and Waves
  • Project 64 What does sound look like? Oscilloscope wave forms.
  • Project 65 Ripple tank.
  • Project 66 Simple harmonic motion. The swinging pendulum.
  • Project 67 Simple harmonic motion. The spring pendulum.
  • Project 68 Generating sine waves.
  • Project 69 Natural frequency.
  • Project 70 Bunsen burner pipe organ. Resonant frequency.
  • Project 71 Springs and electromagnets. Resonance.
  • Project 72 Speed of sound. Timing an echo old school. Why Galileo couldn't do this with light.
  • Project 73 Speed of sound. Resonance in a cylinder.
  • Project 74 Racing against sound. Doppler effect.
  • Project 75 Adding sounds. Beat frequency.
  • Project 76 Pendulum waves.
  • Project 77 Using waves to measure the speed of sound.
  • Section 7 Light
  • Project 78 Ray optics. Tracing the path of light using a laser.
  • Project 79 Two candles, one flame.
  • Project 80 Laser obstacle course.
  • Project 81 Light intensity. Putting distance between yourself and a source of light.
  • Project 82 How do we know that light is a wave? Thomas Young's double slit experiment with a diffraction grating.
  • Project 83 How to measure the size of a light wave.
  • Project 84 The speed of light in your kitchen. Visiting the local hot spots.
  • Project 85 Refraction. How fast does light travel in air or water?
  • Project 86 Polarization. Sunglasses and calculator displays.
  • Project 87 What is the wire of a fiber-optic network? Total internal reflection using a laser and a tank of water.
  • Project 88 The disappearing beaker.
  • Section 8 Hot and Cold
  • Project 89 How much heat is needed to melt Greenland? Heat of fusion.
  • Project 90 A water thermometer.
  • Project 91 What is the coldest possible temperature? Estimating absolute zero.
  • Project 92 Liquid nitrogen.
  • Project 93 Boiling water in a paper cup.
  • Project 94 Boiling water with ice.
  • Project 95 Seebeck effect/Peltier effect. Semiconductor heating.
  • Section 9 Electricity and Magnetism
  • Project 96 Static charges.
  • Project 97 Making lightning. The van de Graaff generator.
  • Project 98 The Wimshurst machine. Separating and storing charges.
  • Project 99 Running into resistance. Ohm's law.
  • Project 100 Circuits: Bulbs and buzzers.
  • Project 101 How does heat affect resistance?
  • Project 102 Resistivity. Can iron conduct electricity better than copper?
  • Project 103 Storing charge. Capacitors.
  • Project 104 Is the magnetic force more powerful than gravity?
  • Project 105 Magnetic levitation using induction. Electromagnetic ring tosser.
  • Project 106 Magnetic levitation using superconductivity. The Meissner effect.
  • Project 107 Moving electrons produce a magnetic field. Oersted's experiment. The magnetic field of a current-carrying wire.
  • Project 108 Faraday's experiment. Current generated by a magnet.
  • Project 109 If copper is not magnetic, how can it affect a falling magnet? Lenz's law.
  • Project 110 Effect of a magnet on an electron beam. The right-hand rule for magnetic force.
  • Project 111 What is the shape of a magnetic field?
  • Project 112 What happens to a current-carrying wire in a magnetic field?
  • Project 113 A no-frills motor.
  • Project 114 Magnetic accelerator.
  • Project 115 Alternating current.
  • Project 116 The diode. An electronic one-way valve.
  • Section 10 The Earth
  • Project 117 Measuring the Earth's magnetic field.
  • Project 118 Weighing the Earth.
  • Section 11 The Twentieth Century
  • Project 119 What is the size of a photon?
  • Project 120 How is a hydrogen atom like the New Jersey Turnpike? Seeing the energy levels of the Bohr atom.
  • Project 121 Photoelectric effect.
  • Project 122 Millikan oil-drop experiment. Mystery marbles. Understanding how the experiment worked.
  • Project 123 Ping-pong ball chain reaction.
  • Project 124 The sodium doublet. Why do we think the electron has both up and down spins?
  • Project 125 Building a cloud chamber. Why muons should not be here. Special relativity.
  • Appendix A: Where to Get Stuff
  • Appendix B: (More Than) Enough Physics to Get By. (Highly Optional)
  • Index