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Re: Turntable demos

At 09:41 PM 7/4/99 -0400, Herb Gottlieb wrote:
Hi Bob.....

And another good one is to place a tub of hot melted paraffin on a
rotating
turntable. When it cools and solidifies its parabolic surface can be
used to make good mirrors for physics demos or telescopes.

Anyone else want to add to this list of demos on turntables??

Simple harmonic motion can be demonstrated by gluing a small cup to the
edge of a turntable platform and projecting the shadow of the cup on a
screen. Also projected simultaneously is the shadow of a pendulum whose
period is designed to match that of the turntable rotation. When the
turntable is turned on, the pendulum is set in motion to match the apparent
back and forth movement of the cup, so that the two shadows stay in
synchronization.


Ron Ebert
UCR Physics Department
ron.ebert@ucr.edu
http://phyld.ucr.edu