Physics Class Bonus Experiments

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Choose from grades K-8 or K-12, includes hands-on experiments in Physics, Chemistry, Earth Science and Biology with step-by-step video instructions, worksheet downloads, quizzes, reading material and more!

Catapults

Catapults are a nifty way to fire things both vertically and horizontally, so you can get a better feel for how objects fly through the air. Notice when you launch how the balls always fall at the same rate – about 16 feet in the first second. What about the energy involved?

Advanced Catapult

This catapult requires a little more time, materials, and effort than the first Catapult (above), but it’s totally worth it. This device is what most folks think of when you say ‘catapult’. I’ve shown you how to make a small model – how large can you make yours?

Bobsleds

Bobsleds use the low-friction surface of ice to coast downhill at ridiculous speeds. You start at the top of a high hill (with loads of potential energy) then slide down a icy hill til you transform all that potential energy into kinetic energy. It’s one of the most efficient ways of energy transformation on planet Earth. Ready to give it a try?

This is one of those quick-yet-highly-satisfying activities which utilizes ordinary materials and turns it into something highly unusual… for example, taking aluminum foil and marbles and making it into a racecar.

While you can make a tube out of gift wrap tubes, it’s much more fun to use clear plastic tubes (such as the ones that protect the long overhead fluorescent lights). Find the longest ones you can at your local hardware store. In a pinch, you can slit the gift wrap tubes in half lengthwise and tape either the lengths together for a longer run or side-by-side for multiple tracks for races. (Poke a skewer through the rolls horizontally to make a quick-release gate.)

Roller Coasters

We’re going to build monster roller coasters in your house using just a couple of simple materials. You might have heard how energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be transferred or transformed (if you haven’t that’s okay – you’ll pick it up while doing this activity).

Roller coasters are a prime example of energy transfer: You start at the top of a big hill at low speeds (high gravitational potential energy), then race down a slope at break-neck speed (potential transforming into kinetic) until you bottom out and enter a loop (highest kinetic energy, lowest potential energy). At the top of the loop, your speed slows (increasing your potential energy), but then you speed up again and you zoom near the bottom exit of the loop (increasing your kinetic energy), and you’re off again!

Mystery Toy

How does this work?? You can easily create one of these mystery toys out of an old can with a lid, a heavy rock or hexnut, two paper clips, and a rubber band (at least 3″ x 1/4″). It will keep small kids and cats busy for hours.

P-Shooters

This is a simple, fun, and sneaky way of throwing tiny objects. It’s from one of our spy-kit projects. Just remember, keep it under-cover.

Uni-polar Motor

Find a spare magnet – one you really don’t care about. Bring it up close to another magnet to find where the north and south poles are on the spare magnet. Did you find them? Mark the spots with a pen – put a N for north, and a S for south. Now break the spare magnet in half, separating the north from the south pole. (This might take a bit of muscle!) You should have one half be a north magnet, and the other a south. Or do you?

One of the big mysteries of the universe is why we can’t separate the north from the south end of a magnet. No matter how small you break that magnet down, you’ll still get one side that’s attracted to the north and the other that’s repelled. There’s just no way around this!

If you COULD separate the north from the south pole, you could point a magnet’s south pole toward your now-separated north pole, and it would always be repelled, no matter what orientation it rotated to. (Normally, as soon as the magnet is repelled, it twists around and lines up the opposite pole and snap! There go your fingers.) But if it were always repelled, you could chase it around the room or stick a pin through it so it would constantly move and rotate.

Well, what if we sneakily use electromagnetism? Note that you can use a metal screw, ball bearing, or other metal object that easily rotates. If your metal ball bearing is also magnetic, you can combine both the screw and the magnet together.

Photoelectric Effect

When Einstein aimed a red light at the metal sheet, nothing happened. Even when he cranked the intensity (brightness) of the red light, still nothing happened. So it was the energy of the light (wavelength), not the number of photons (intensity) that made the electrons eject from the plate. This is called the ‘photoelectric effect’. Can you imagine what happens if we aim a UV light (which has even more energy than blue light) at the plate?

This photoelectric effect is used by all sorts of things today, including solar cells, electronic components, older types of television screens, video camera detectors, and night-vision goggles.

This photoelectric effect also causes the outer shell of orbiting spacecraft to develop an electric charge, which can wreck havoc on its internal computer systems.