Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations

May 18, 2011 8:13 AM

Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations presents videos, at times stunning and informative, of in-class science.

Some highlights.

Harmonic Motion: "Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and random motion. One might call this kinetic art and the choreography of the dance of the pendulums is stunning! Aliasing and quantum revival can also be shown."

Molecular Size: "A known volume of olive oil is dropped onto a pollen covered pond. The oil expands to form a monolayer, whose area, divided into the original volume of oil, gives the height of the molecular layer."

Exploding Garbage Can: "Liquid nitrogen is poured into a sealed 20 oz container, leading to garbage can liftoff."

Exploding Wire: "A bank of five 400 μF capacitors wired up in parallel (to give a total of 2000 μF) is charged up to about 3.5 kV and suddenly discharged through 100 cm of 1.3 mm diameter spring temper steel music wire. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME"

Relativity Train: "A presentation on length contraction from January 1981 featuring Prof. Papaliolios."

posted by jjray (8 comments total)

Their video player didn't work for me, but I found the same stuff on YouTube.
posted by DU at 8:23 AM on May 18, 2011 [2 favorites]

Nice -- thanks for the link...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 8:26 AM on May 18, 2011

Whoa
posted by DU at 8:28 AM on May 18, 2011 [3 favorites]

Okay, well, I can close that window I was saving that page on thinking it would make a great MeFi post. Glad someone put it here. That whole Demonstrations website is awesome. It nearly makes me wish I had kids so I could explore these with them.
posted by hippybear at 8:37 AM on May 18, 2011

This and this remind me of an old post that showed these effects in great old 40s-60s infographicy TV like with a huge grid in the background and a set specially built to show multiple PsOV. Does anyone remember the one I mean?
posted by DU at 8:38 AM on May 18, 2011

After I decided to give up the idea that this was from the 40s, it was easy to find: Frames of Reference.
posted by DU at 11:12 AM on May 18, 2011

I remember reading, years and years ago, about the olive oil experiment (or something analogous) and wondering "well, how do they know that it spread out to cover the entire pond". That video closed that chapter of my life.
posted by selenized at 11:58 AM on May 18, 2011

Exploding Wire: "A bank of five 400 μF capacitors wired up in parallel (to give a total of 2000 μF) is charged up to about 3.5 kV and suddenly discharged through 100 cm of 1.3 mm diameter spring temper steel music wire. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME"

Exploding wire detonators are used in nuclear weapons.
posted by alby at 1:20 PM on May 19, 2011