The PocketLab Voyager swing, 3D printable from the accompanying .STL file, offers your physics students a way to study a plethora of physics concepts in a single experiment. Figure 1 shows a closeup up the swing, approximately 5½ inches tall, 1¾ inches wide, and 1¾ inches deep.
The two pendulums shown in Figure 1 were printed on a 3D printer. The .STL file is included with this lesson so you can print them with your 3D printer. They have the same length, same mass, and same thickness. They swing about a piece of metal rod from a coat hanger. To provide a rigid support, the rod has been attached to a ring stand. A tiny magnet has been taped to the bottom of each pendulum. PocketLab Voyager's magnetic field sensor keeps track of the motion as the pendulums swing back-and-forth. What is your prediction as to which one has
In a well-known 1938 book entitled "Demonstration Experiments in Physics", editor Richard Sutton describes a device that produces simple harmonic motion (SHM) mechanically. With today's tremendous growth in the 3D printing industry, such a device can now be easily constructed for classroom demonstrations of SHM. Couple this device with PocketLab Voyager and you can obtain real-time graphs describing the motion.
This cool inertia cart dates back to the early 1900's, but hasn't seen much action since, primarily due to a lack of ease in construction. However, now with the PocketLab HotRod and three 3D printable parts whose .STL files are included with this lesson, you can use this demonstration in your classroom. Depending upon the grade level of your students, you can customize the discussion as appropriate. Concepts involved include Newton's Laws of Motion, pulleys, force, acceleration, Half-Atwood machine, inertia, and moment of inertia.
Newton's third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. By crashing a physics cart into a wall, various crash cushions can be used to reduce the forces experience by the cart.
There are numerous analogies when comparing linear and rotational motion. At the heart of these comparisons lie the concepts of mass on one hand and moment of inertia on the other. In addition to being a property of any physical object, mass is a measure of the resistance of an object to acceleration when a net force has been applied to the object. Newton's Second Law of Motion expresses this in the fa
As shown in Figure 1, a "Speeder Upper" is a pair of disks that are connected by a short rod of much smaller radius. The NSTA science ruler gives you a feel for the dimensions of the Speeder Upper. The disks are 0.5" thick and 2.5" in diameter and are connected by a short 5/16" diameter wood dowel rod. The 3D printer stl file for the disks is provided with this lesson in the event that you want to make a Speeder Upper for use in your physics classroom.
Brownian motion can be defined as the random motion of particles in a liquid or gas caused by the bombardment from molecules in the containing medium. Have you ever looked at dust particles in the sunlight shining through a window? They appear to move about randomly, even defying gravity. This is an example of Brownian motion in which the dust particles are bombarded on all sides by gas molecules in the air. Other examples of Brownian motion include the motion of grains of pollen on the surface of still water, the dif
The ideal gas law is commonly seen in the form PV = nRT, where P is the pressure, V is the volume, T is the absolute temperature, n is the amount of the gas in moles, and R is the ideal gas constant. It is a composite form of Boyle's, Charles's, Avogadro's, and Gay Lussac's laws. This law helps to explain how many things work, including bicycle pumps, hot air balloons, pressure cookers, and steam engines, just to mention a few.
We are going to assume that you have studied the concepts of moment of inertia and physical pendulums in your physics class. With that in mind, we present a "Moment of Inertia Challenge" for you in this lab. As you know, moment of inertia depends not only on the mass of an object, but also on how the mass is distributed, as well as the specific axis upon which it rotates. It is of particular interest to compare the moments of inertia of two objects with the same mass but having the mass dist
