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Re: [Phys-l] display case

On 2/17/2011 11:28 AM, Anthony Lapinski wrote:
I teach in the high school and plan to get a hallway display case to
highlight physics. I am wondering if any of you have such a thing and can
recommend a case. I want it to be low enough so that our youngest students
an have a look. I would also like it to have an outlet/light for any
optics displays. How deep should it be? It will have a security lock.

Cost is really not an issue. Just want something I can easily change every
month to show different physics topics, awards, projects, etc.

__
There are some celebrated physics display cases in the English manner which venerates the traditional.
In the foyer of the Clarendon lab at Oxford, there is a case. Or was, until a year or two ago.
My memory is by now dim. I seem to recall 3ft X 2ft X 10ins. In it, there is an electric bell, whose clapper has been ringing since 1840 powered by two primary cells. These are zinc/paper Volta or Zamboni piles. It was purchased from a London instrument maker.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell>

It is reminscent of Franklin's electrostatic bells.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_bells

At U Queensland, Brisbane is Parnell's dripping pitch demonstration. It drips once in nine or ten years.
<http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/physics_museum/pitchdrop.shtml>

At U Otago, Dunedin, N.Z., is Beverly's clock - unwound since 1864. It is an 'atmospheric' clock,
being wound by the varying volume of a diaphragm - varying with temperature and air pressure.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Clock>

There is a display case secured by Clerk Maxwell for the Cavendish at Cambridge with pieces used by Maxwell, Thomson, Rutherford, Aston, Cockroft & Walton; pieces associated with the Pulsar discovery and the structure of DNA
<http://www.phy.cam.ac.uk/outreach/museum.php>

Maxwell produced a 3D structure describing Gibbs equation of state on the following axes: Entropy/Energy/Volume
<http://www-outreach.phy.cam.ac.uk/camphys/museum/area1/images/cabinet1_2.jpg>
Maxwell sent a copy to Yale which gathers dust on display there.

Brian W.