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Constructing Physical Science

Adam Johnston
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drinking bird

I often host a lab where we study the Drinking Bird in its native habitat. But, in case you don't have a chance to be in my lab and you don't have your own drinking bird, here's some video you can analyze. The bird goes through two of its cycles in this clip, and I repeat those cycles at high speed …

liquid motion

What makes up matter? We can't see it directly, but observing some details might help us imagine what's going on at a deeper level. https://youtu.be/pAvsUTlmncM I have two glass bottles of water that I drop red dye into. All the water came out of my faucet, but the two bottles behave differently. Wh…

sound tubes

Different musical instruments work because they play the note you want to hear. This seems obvious, but it's no small thing to make something play exactly the right note, and leave out all of the other noise. How do they do this? Instruments are made from lots of different stuffs and geometries. Som…

upward liquids

A lot of people don't believe me when I tell them this, but I truly don't understand how water crawls up a paper towel or string or piece of cloth. How does it get the energy to do this when it's just sitting there; and the towel is also seemingly passive in the whole affair? I'm a physicist and I w…

universe matters

It probably goes without saying: Trying to understand the entire universe is nearly impossible. Fortunately, it’s also really simple. We’ll try to find some middle ground, honoring both the simplicity and the impossibility. First, there’s only one universe1. That’s good news and bad news. Only havin…

static cat

I like to tell students that cats love to do physics. Seldom do I actually get a chance to show them, however. Thank goodness I can make videos so that I don't have to bring Gus to class with me. Here's some work we were doing together to investigate how balloons and cats stick together. https://www…

equinox sunset

Sunset in Ogden, UT; 21 Sept. 2020 Yesterday in class we talked about what it means to be the day of the "equinox." We related this to the "equator" and to "equal" amounts of sunlight and darkness in our day. But I also remembered that this meant something about where you could expect to see a sunri…

elevator physics

I like to send people into elevators with scales that they can stand on while traveling up and down. It's a great exercise because they get to see some physics that they are actively a part of. At the same time, it becomes a nice conversation piece as different, surprised observers come in and out o…

motion analysis: rolling

I love to do this lab or one similar to it in person, but you can also conduct an investigation about motion on your own. I've created some videos that you can use to collect data (and maybe these will inspire you to setup a situation from which to collect your own data) and I've also given you a li…

tricky tracks and scattered words

In class, we worked together to make sense of data. We usually think of “data” as something that comes in numbers and graphs, like it did with pendulums and with motion data collected in lab. But it can take many forms, like this example we imagined of indentations on some sandstone: (This is taken …

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