| DCS # | Demonstration | Abstract |
|---|---|---|
| 1A10.20 | standards of mass | Show students 1 lb, 1 kg, 1 slug masses. |
| 1A10.35 | meter stick | Set out a standard meter. |
| 1A40.10 | components of a vector | Arrows define a three dimensional coordinate system. An arbitrary vector is viewed in the three planes. |
| 1A50.10 | radian disc | A flexible strip of plastic equal to the radius is bent around the edge of a circle. |
| 1A60.10 | Powers of Ten | "Powers of Ten" is a film covering scales from the universe to sub-atomic. |
| 1C10.10 | bulldozer on moving sheet/2D | A bulldozer runs at constant speed on a moving paper to show how velocities add and subtract. |
| 1C20.10 | penny and feather | Drop a penny and feather in a glass tube, first full of air and then evacuated. |
| 1C30.10 | free fall timer | A ball is timed as it drops .5m, 1m, 1.5m, or 2m. |
| 1D15.10 | ultrasonic detector and students | Have a student walk to and from a sonic ranger while observing plots of position, velocity, and acc. |
| 1D40.10 | throw objects | A light disc contains a heavy slug that can be shifted from the center to side. Mark the center of mass. |
| 1D50.10 | ball on a string | Tie a lightweight ball to a sting and twirl around in a vertical circle. |
| 1D50.40 | pail of water | Swing a bucket of water in a verticle circle over your head. |
| 1D60.10 | howitzer and tunnel | A ball fired vertically from cart moving horizontally falls back into the muzzle. |
| 1D60.20 | simultaneous fall | Two balls simultaneously dropped and projected horizontally hit the floor together. |
| 1D60.30 | monkey and hunter | A gun shoots at a target, released when the gun is fired. The ball hits the target in midair. |
| 1F20.10 | inertia balls | Break the string on the top or bottom of a suspended mass. |
| 1F30.10 | persistence of motion (air track) | A single cart on the air track. |
| 1G10.40 | Atwood's machine | Two equal masses are hung from a light pulley. A small percentage of one mass is moved to the other side. |
| 1H10.10 | push me pull me carts | Two people stand on roller carts and both pull on a rope or push with a long stick. |
| 1H11.20 | tennis ball cannon | A cannon on wheels shoots a tennis ball. |
| 1J10.10 | map of state | Suspend a map of the state from holes drilled at large cities to find the "center of the state". |
| 1J11.20 | leaning tower of Lire | Stack blocks stairstep fashion until the top block sticks out beyond any part of the bottom block. |
| 1J30.10 | suspended block | Forces parallel and perpendicular to the plane will support the car midair when the plane is removed. |
| 1J30.25 | rope and three students | Two large strong students pull on the ends of a rope and a small student pushes down in the middle. |
| 1J40.10 | grip bar | A thin rod mounted perpendicular to a broom handle holds a 1 Kg mass on a sliding collar. |
| 1J40.20 | meter stick balance | Hang weights from a beam that pivots in the center on a knife edge. |
| 1K10.20 | ladder against a wall | Set a model ladder against a box and move a weight up a rung at a time. |
| 1K10.30 | walking the spool | Pull at various angles on the cord wrapped around the hub of a spool to move the spool forward or back. |
| 1K20.10 | friction blocks - surface material | Pull a block with four different surfaces with a spring scale. |
| 1K20.30 | static vs. sliding friction | Use a spring scale and block to show that static friction is greater than sliding friction . |
| 1K30.10 | bed of nails | Lie down on a bed of 16d nails on 1" centers. |
| 1L10.10 | Cavendish balance film loop | Time lapse of the Cavendish experiment. |
| 1M10.20 | pile driver | Drive a nail into a block of wood with a model pile driver. |
| 1M40.10 | nose basher | A bowling ball pendulum is held against the nose and allowed to swing out and back. |
| 1M40.15 | stopped pendulum | A pendulum started at the height of a reference line reaches the same height when a stop is inserted. |
| 1M40.20 | loop the loop | A ball rools down an incline and then around a vertical circle. |
| 1N10.20 | egg in sheet | Throw an egg into a sheet held by two students. |
| 1N20.20 | sprring apart air track gliders | Burn a string holding a compressed spring between two air gliders. |
| 1N22.10 | fire extinguisher wagon | Mount a fire extinguisher on a cart and take a ride. |
| 1N22.20 | water rocket | Pump a toy water rocket the same number of times, first with only air, and then with water. |
| 1N30.10 | collision balls | Two balls or many balls on bifilar suspension. |
| 1Q10.10 | inertia wands and two students | Students twirl equal mass wands, one with the mass at the ends and the other with the mass at the middle. |
| 1Q10.30 | ring, disc, and sphere | A ring, disc, and sphere of the same diameter are rolled down an incline. |
| 1Q20.10 | whirlybird (adj. ang. mom.) | A weight on a string wrapped around a wheel drives a radial rod with adjustable weights. |
| 1Q30.10 | passing the wheel | Pass a bicycle wheel back and forth to a person on a rotating stool. |
| 1Q40.10 | rotating stool and weights | Spin on a rotating stool with a dumbell in each hand. |
| 1Q40.30 | rotating stool and bicycle wheel | Invert a spinning bike wheel while sitting on a rotating stool. |
| 1Q50.10 | precessing disc | Spin a cardboard disc on a pencil inserted in a hole at the center and touch a finger to the rim. |
| 1Q50.20 | bicycle wheel gyro | Spin a bicycle wheel mounted on a long axle with adjustable counterbalance. |
| 1Q60.10 | bicycle wheel top | Extend the axle of a weighted bike wheel and terminate with a rubber ball. |
| 1R10.10 | stretching a spring | Add masses to a pan balance and measure the deflection with a cathetometer. |
| 1R20.10 | breaking wire | Add weights to baling wire attached to the ceiling until the wire breaks. |
| 1R40.30 | dead and live balls | Drop bounce and no-bounce balls. |
| 2A10.20 | floating metals | Float needles, paperclips, rings of wire, etc. on water. |
| 2A15.10 | ring and thread | A loop of thread in the middle of a soap film forms a circle when the center is popped. |
| 2B20.10 | pressure independent of direction | Insert a rotatable thistle tube with a membrane into a beaker of water. |
| 2B20.40 | Pascal's vases | Six tubes of various shapes are connected to a common water reservoir. |
| 2B30.10 | crush the can | Boil water in a can and cap. As the vapor pressure is reduced by cooling, the can collapses. |
| 2B30.30 | Magdeburg hemispheres | Evacuate Magdeburg hemispheres and try to separate them. |
| 2B40.10 | weigh submerged block | Lower a 3 Kg block of aluminum suspended from a spring scale into water and note the new weight. |
| 2B40.20 | Archimedes' principle | Suspend a pail and weight from a spring scale, lower the weight into water, collect the overflow, pour it into the pail. |
| 2B40.30 | Cartesian diver | Push on a diaphram at the top of a large graduate or squeeze a stoppered whisky flask to make the diver sink. |
| 2C20.30 | floating ball | A ball is suspended in an upward jet of air. |
| 2C20.35 | funnel and ball | Support a ping pong ball by air or water streaming out of an upside-down funnel. |
| 2C20.40 | lifting plate | Air blows radially out between two plates, supporting weights hung from the bottom plate. |
| 2C20.60 | curve ball | Use a "V" shaped launcher to throw curve balls. |
| 2C50.10 | smoke ring | Tap smoke rings out of a coffee can through a 1" dia. hole. |
| 3A10.10 | simple pendulum | Suspend a simple pendulum from a ringstand. |
| 3A15.10 | physical pendulum | Any distributed mass pendulum. |
| 3A20.10 | mass on a spring | A mass oscillates slowly on a large spring. |
| 3A20.30 | air track glider and spring | An air cart is attached to a single horizontal coil spring. |
| 3A40.10 | circular motion vs. mass on a aspring | Shadow project a ball at the edge of a disc rotating at the same frequency as a mass on a spring. |
| 3A40.20 | circular motion vs. pendulum | Shadow project a pendulum and turntable which have identical frequencies. |
| 3A60.10 | Tacoma Narrows film | A film of the collapse of the bridge due to resonance. |
| 3A70.10 | Wilberforce pendulum | Energy transfers between vertical and torsional modes. |
| 3A70.20 | coupled pendula | Hang two or three pendula from a flexible metal frame. |
| 3B10.10 | pulse on a rope | Give a heavy peice of stretched rope a quick pulse. |
| 3B10.30 | Shive (Bell Labs) wave model | Excite a horizontal torsional wave machine by hand. The other end is open, clamped, or critically damped. |
| 3B20.10 | hanging slinky | A long slinky is supported on bifilar suspension every four inches. |
| 3B22.10 | Melde's vibrating string | Drive one end of a string over a pulley to a mass with variable frequency SHM |
| 3B30.30 | bell in a vacuum | Pump air from a bell jar as a battery powered bell rings inside. |
| 3B40.10 | doppler buzzer | Swing a battery powered buzzer on a string around in a horizontal circle. |
| 3B45.10 | ripple tank film loops | A 3:45 film loop shows doppler effect and shock waves. |
| 3B50.40 | Moire pattern transparencies | A double slit representation of Moire patterns from two sheets of semicircular ruled transparencies. |
| 3B55.10 | two speaker bar | Two speakers driven from a common source are mounted at the ends of a long bar. |
| 3B55.40 | trombone / Quinckes' tube | A speaker drives two tubes, one variable , that come together into a common horn. |
| 3B60.10 | beat forks | Two tuning forks differing by about 1 Hz are mounted on resonance boxes. |
| 3B60.20 | beats on scope | Two audio transformers are fed thru an audio interstage transformer to an oscilloscope and audio amp. |
| 3B70.10 | coupled tuning forks | Two matched tuning forks are mounted on resonance boxes. Hit one and the other vibrates too. |
| 3B70.20 | coupled speaker/tuning forks | Drive a tuning fork on a resonant box with a speaker. |
| 3C20.10 | range of hearing | Use an oscillator driving a good audio system to demonstrate the range of hearing. |
| 3C50.10 | Pasco Fourier synthesizer | The Pasco Fourier synthesizer allows one to build an arbitrary waveform with up to nine harmonics. |
| 3C50.30 | Helmholtz resonators and microphone | Hold a small microphone individually to a set of Helmholtz resonators. |
| 3D20.10 | sonometer | A sounding box with strings, tuning machines, and adjustable bridges. |
| 3D30.10 | vertical resonance tube | Draw a glass tube out of a water bath while holding a tuning fork over one end. |
| 3D30.70 | hoot tubes | A bunsen burner heats a screen in the bottom of a large open vertical tube. |
| 3D40.20 | singing rod | Hold a long aluminum rod at the midpoint and stroke with rosened fingers. |
| 3D40.30 | Chladni plate | Strike or bow a horizontal metal plate covered with sand while touching the edge at various nodal points. |
| 4A30.10 | bimetal strip | Strips of dissimilar metals bonded together bend when heated. |
| 4A30.20 | balls and ring | A ring with a set of two balls, one over and one under size. Heat the ring and lslip over both. |
| 4A40.10 | lead bell, solder spring | Ring a lead bell after it is frozen in liquid nitrogen, Cool a coil of solder to make a spring. |
| 4A40.30 | smashing rose and tube | Cool a rose, urffer tube, or handball in a clear dewar of liquid nitrogen and smash it. |
| 4B20.10 | convection tube | Heat one side of a glass tube loop filled with water and insert some ink. |
| 4B40.10 | light the match | Light a match at the focus of one parabolic reflector with a heating element at the focus of another reflector. |
| 4B50.20 | boiling water in a paper cup | Burn one paper cup, boil water in another. |
| 4B60.10 | dropping lead shot | Drop a bag of lead shot is dropped several times and measure the temperature rise. |
| 4C30.10 | boiling by cooling | Cool a flask stoppered flask filled with warm water with ice until boiling starts. |
| 4C31.30 | drinking bird | Cooling causes vapor to condense, lowering the center of gravity until the bird tips, raising the c. of g. |
| 4D10.10 | Brownian motion cell | View a smoke cell under a microscope. |
| 4D20.10 | Crookes' radiometer | The fake radiometer is evacuated until the mean free path is about the dimension of the system. |
| 4E10.20 | balloons in liquid nitrogen | Pour liquid nitrogen over an air filled balloon until it collapses and then let it warm up again. |
| 4E30.10 | constant volume bulb | Immersed a bulb with an absolute pressure gauge in boiling water, ice water, and liquid nitrogen. |
| 4F30.10 | Stirling engine | Show both a working stirling engine and a cutaway model. |
| 5A10.10 | rods, fur, and silk | PVC rod and felt, acrylic rod and cellophane, with the Braun electroscope as a charge indicator |
| 5A20.10 | rods and pivot | With one charged rod on a pivot, use another of the same or opposite charge to show attraction or repulsion. |
| 5A20.20 | pith balls | Suspend two small pith balls and show either attraction or repulsion. |
| 5A40.10 | charging by induction | Charging by induction using two balls on stands with an electroscope for a charge indicator. |
| 5A40.20 | can attracted to charged rod | A hoop of light aluminum is attracted to a charged rod. |
| 5A50.10 | Wimshurst machine | Crank a Wimshurst generator. |
| 5A50.30 | Van de Graaff generator | Show sparks from a Van de Graaff generator to a nearby grounded ball. |
| 5B10.10 | hair on end | While standing on an insulated stool, charge yourself up with a Van de Graaff generator. |
| 5B10.25 | confetti (puffed wheat) | Confetti (puffed wheat, styrofoam peanuts) flies off the ball of an electrostatic generator. |
| 5B20.10 | Faraday's ice pail | With a proof plane and electroscope, show charge is on the outside of a hollow conductor. |
| 5B20.35 | radio in a cage | Place a wire mesh cage over a radio. |
| 5B30.30 | lightning rod | Insert a sphere and point of the same height between horizontal metal plates charged by a Wimshurst. |
| 5C10.20 | parallel plate capacitor | Change the spacing of a charged parallel plate capacitor while it is attached to an electroscope. |
| 5C20.10 | capacitor with dielectrics | Insert and remove a dielectric from a charged parallel plate capacitor while it is attached to an electroscope. |
| 5C20.30 | dissectible condenser | A capacitor is charged, disassembled, passed around, assembled, and discharged with a spark. |
| 5C30.20 | short a capacitor | Charge a large electrolytic (5000 mfd) capacitor to 120 V and short with a screwdriver. |
| 5C30.30 | light a bulb with a capacitor | Charge a large electroylitic capacitor and connect it to a lamp. |
| 5D20.10 | wire coil in liquid nitrogen | A lamp glows brighter when a series resistance coil is immersed in liquid nitrogen. |
| 5D20.20 | iron wire in flame | Heat a coil of iron wire in series with a battery and a lamp and the lamp will dim. |
| 5D40.10 | Jacob's ladder | A arc rises between rabbit ear electrodes attached to a high voltage transformer. |
| 5E50.10 | thermocouple | Two iron-copper junctions, one in ice and the other in a flame, are connected to a galvanometer. |
| 5F10.10 | Ohm's law | Measure current and voltage in a simple circuit. Change the voltage or resistance. |
| 5F20.10 | Kirchoff's voltage law | Measure the voltages around a three resistor and battery circuit. |
| 5F20.50 | series and parallel light bulbs | A light bulb board with switches allows configuration of several combinations of series and parallel lamps. |
| 5F30.10 | capacitor and light bulb | A large lelectrolytic capacitor, a light bulb, and a 120 V dc supply in series show a long time constant. |
| 5G20.30 | magnetic domain model | An array of small compass needles shows domain structures. |
| 5G50.50 | Meissner effect | Cool a superconductor and a magnet floats over it due to magnetic repulsion. |
| 5H10.20 | Oersted's effect | Explore the field around a long wire with a compass needle. |
| 5H10.30 | magnet and iron filings | Sprinkle iron filings on a glass sheet placed on top of a bar magnet. |
| 5H15.10 | iron filings around a wire | Iron filings are sprinkled around a vertical wire running through the denter of a pexiglass sheet. |
| 5H15.40 | solenoid and iron filings | A solenoid is wound through a peice of plexiglass for use with iron filings on the overhead projector. |
| 5H15.50 | field of a toroid | Iron filings show the field of a toroid which is wound through a sheet of plexiglass. |
| 5H20.10 | magnets on a pivot | One magnet is placed on a pivot, the other is used to attract or repel the first. |
| 5H30.10 | cathode ray tube | Deflect the beam in an open CRT with a magnet. |
| 5H30.20 | e/m tube | Show the beam of the small e/m tube in Helmholtz coils on tv. A hand held magnet gives a corkscrew. |
| 5H40.10 | parallel wires | Long vertical parallel wires attract or repel depending on the current direction. |
| 5H40.15 | interacting coils | Two hanging loops attract or repel depending on current direction. |
| 5H40.30 | jumping wire | A wire is placed in a horseshoe magnet and connected to a battery. The wire jumps out of the magnet. |
| 5J20.10 | RL time constant on scope | Show the RL time constant on a scope. |
| 5J20.20 | lamps in series or parallel with ind. | Hook light bulbs in series with a large electromagnet. |
| 5K10.20 | induction coil with magnet, galv. | A magnet is moved in and out of a coil of wire attached to a galvanometer. |
| 5K10.30 | induction with coils and battery | Attach one coil to a galvanometer, another to a battery and tap switch. Use a core to increase coupling. |
| 5K20.10 | Eddy currents in pendulum | A copper sheet and comb, ring and broken ring are swung through a large electromagnet. |
| 5K20.25 | magnets in Eddy tubes | Drop a magnet and a dummy in glass and aluminum tubes, then switch. The magnet in Al falls slowly. |
| 5K20.30 | jumping ring | A solid aluminum ring on the vertical transformer jumps while a split ring does not. |
| 5K40.40 | motor/generator | A large AC/DC motor/generator has both slip and split rings. |
| 5K40.80 | hand crank generator | Use a hand cranked generator to light an ordinary light bulb. |
| 5M10.10 | Hall voltage | Measure the transverse potential of a large rectangle of biased N-doped germanium in a magnetic field. |
| 5N20.10 | induction coil | The small handheld induction coil. |
| 5N20.25 | hand held Tesla and lamp | Light a fluorescent lamp by touching with a hand held tesla coil. |
| 5N20.80 | Tesla coil and pinwheel | Place a pinwheel on the secondary of a tesla coil. |
| 5N30.10 | project the spectrum | Project white light through a high dispersion prism. |
| 6A01.10 | speed of light | Demonstrate speed of light by the path difference method with a fast pulser and fast oscilloscope. |
| 6A42.20 | refraction tank | Rotate a beam of light in a tank of water containing some fluorescein. |
| 6A44.10 | blackboard optics | Multiple beams of light pass through large scale optical elements. |
| 6A44.40 | laser and fiber optics | Shine a laser into a curved plastic rod. |
| 6A44.50 | light below surface | An underwater light illuminates powder on the surface of water to form a central spot of light. |
| 6A60.30 | thin lens projection | Project the filament of a lamp with a thin lens. |
| 6B10.15 | inverse square model | A wire frame pyramid connects areas of 1, 4, and 16 units. |
| 6B40.10 | variac and light bulb | Vary the voltage to a 1 KW light bulb with a variac to show color change with temperature. |
| 6C10.10 | single slit and laser | Shine a laser beam through single slits of various sizes. |
| 6C10.15 | adjustable slit and laser | Shine a laser beam through an adjustable slit. |
| 6C20.10 | Arago's (Poisson's) spot | Shine a laser beam at a small ball and look at the diffraction pattern. |
| 6D10.10 | double slit and laser | Shine a laser beam through double slits of different widths and spacing. |
| 6D20.10 | number of slits | Shine a laser beam through various numbers of slits with the same spacing. |
| 6D30.10 | Newton's rings | Reflect white light off Newton's rings onto the wall. |
| 6D30.20 | soap film interference | Reflect white light off a soap film onto a screen. |
| 6D40.10 | Michelson interferometer | Use a Michelson interferometer with either laser or white light. |
| 6F40.10 | sunset | Pass abeam of white light through a tank of water with scattering centers from a solution of oil in alcohol. |
| 6H10.10 | polaroids on the overhead | Show polarization with two sheets of polaroid and a pair of sunglasses on an overhead projector. |
| 6H10.20 | microwave polarization | Hold a grid of parallel wires in a microwave beam and rotate the grid. |
| 6H20.10 | Brewster's angle | Rotate a polariod filter in a beam that reflects at Brewster's angle off a glass onto a screen. |
| 6H30.40 | Karo syrup | Insert a tube of liquid sugar between crossed polaroids. |
| 6H35.10 | two calcite crystals | Use a second calcite crystal to show the polarization of the ordinary and extraordinary rays. |
| 6H35.50 | stress plastic | A set of plastic shapes are bent between crossed polariods. |
| 6Q10.10 | holograms | Show a hologram. |
| 7A10.10 | photoelectric effect in zinc | Use UV light to discharge a clean zinc plate mounted on an electroscope. |
| 7A50.40 | vibrating circular wire | Excite a circular wire at audio frequencies by an electromagnet drive to produce standing waves. |
| 7A60.10 | electron diffraction | Rings or spots are shown with the old Welch electron diffraction tube. |
| 7B10.10 | line spectra and student gratings | Have students view line sources through replica gratings. |
| 7D10.10 | gieger counter & samples | Listen to a Geiger counter when radioactive samples are tested. |
| 7D30.60 | diffusion cloud chambers | Dry ice diffusion cloud chambers. |
| 8A10.10 | Orrery model | A mechanical model of the inner planets. |
| 8A10.25 | phases of the moon | View a ball illuminated by a distant light with a tv camera as the angle between the ball and light varies. |
| 8A10.55 | retrograde motion model | Two balls connected with a rod fixed through one ball and sliding through the other orbit on common ficus. |
| 8A10.80 | celestial sphere | A simple model celestial sphere is made from a round bottom flask. Pictures. |
| 8C10.10 | expanding universe | Pull a rubber hose threaded through five large styrofoam balls. |