| Poor man's "Liquid Nitrogen" - 311 sec
DANGEROUS DEMO! Can't get liquid nitrogen? Then make your own version by using Dry Ice. Note that this demonstration involves several major safety hazards, and should only be performed by skilled professionals.
Note that dry ice comes from companies listed in your local yellow pages. Some welder supply stores carry it. In Seattle, you can find it in the seafood section of QFC neighborhood grocery.
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: science physics diy chemistry amasci dry-ice liquid-nitrogen demo demonstrations tutorials
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| Traffic Waves - 422 sec
Sometimes one driver can vastly improve traffic
Main site: http://trafficwaves.org/
On Seattle I-5, this left-hand exit lane is usually backed up during rush hour. The exit ramp leads into the high speed "Express Lanes" under the city. But if it's jammed, you'll lose more time than you gain. If you miss getting into that lane early, then you're screwed, since nobody in the mile-long row of cars will let you in. And while stuck in that lane, you have to sit in line for many minutes, driving like 2MPH.
But if I let ten cars merge ahead of me as I approach the jam, like magic the whole thing evaporates.
Unfortunately this video can't show you the view from above. You can't see behind me, so you can't see that my "hole" is the only one in a very long row of cars. Also you can't see the size of the reliable daily jam that was there on other days, or was there ahead of me before I arrived.
Note that letting a few cars ahead of you is NOTHING. On a 30min congested commute at 65MPH, 2sec between cars, if you instead drove 5MPH slower than the rest, how many other cars would pass you? Seventy five! In other words, you're only a "Slow Driver" when huge numbers of cars pass you. On the same commute, letting ten cars ahead of you will slow you down insignificantly: by less than 1MPH. Ten cars one way or another is too small to matter.
Conversely, if you want to drive faster than everyone else, then you need to pass fifty or one hundred other drivers. If you only managed to pass a few cars, that's called FAILURE, and your speed wasn't faster enough to matter.
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: traffic waves amasci science physics chaos diy cars driving hypermiling
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| Ultrasonic Mayhem #1 - 47 sec
THE ELECTRIC MENTOS COLA TEST. But no cola. And no mentos. A blast of ultrasound can remove the effervescence from soda in a few seconds. Cold soda works best. I put a few drops of dish soap in the soda, and I think it gives a larger response. (This one isn't my invention; I heard about it from Jim B. of Science Club Inc.)
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: ultrasound ultrasonic physics acoustics cavitation mentos diet coke amasci diy
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| hand-drawn holograms - 179 sec
see http://amasci.com/holo/ Scratch-holograms can be made on CD cases using a couple of thumbtacks poked through a stick. Or get fancy and use a professional compass and black painted polycarbonate. Or automate the process with a paperclip stuck into a motorized electric eraser.
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: hand hologram holography drawn diy science physics optics project amasci gadget
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| Edible Lava Lamp? Wind tunnel? Dorkbot Seattle - 57 sec
Basil Seed Drink plus dry ice: a spontaneous fluid mechanical food device made at Dorkbot techno-artist meeting. Basil Seed Drink can be found at an Asian grocery, or buy it online. In Seattle, dry ice comes from QFC food marts and from certain welding supply shops. Or look in phonebook yellow pages.
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: dorkbot physics fluid mechanics science amasci DIY sculpture kinetic
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| Buckyball fullerene from neodymium supermagnet spheres - 109 sec
MAGNET SALE AT MR. GEORGE! http://www.supermagnetman.net/index.php?cPath=43 He's got 8mm sp1000 spheres for $0.30, sp0701 silver for $0.34
See http://amasci.com/amateur/neospher.html Here's the trick to rapidly assembling a buckyball from sixty supermagnet beads.
Note that this isn't a true Buckminster Fullerene, since magnets are dipoles while carbon atoms are quadrupoles. True buckyballs have hexagons and pentagons, while ours has squares and is slightly smaller.
The big challenge: start with two pentagons, then assemble two hemispheres. (This is how it happens in nature.) Then knit the two hemispheres seamlessly together, trapping a glass marble or other gigantic ionized metal atom within. It's harder than it looks!
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: amasci science physics neo neodymium supermagnet supermagnets sphere puzzle spheres beads
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| Unwise Microwave Experiment - 313 sec
Beer bottle in a microwave oven. IT MELTS. No, it's not very safe. Not for kids!
That's my original oven from 1994, it's still working fine (but with paint a bit burned.) Whenever you see charred spots on your ceiling, you know that someone's been making plasma balls again.
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: microwave unwise physics amasci bottle glass melt melted lava
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| People Doing Strange Things With Electricity 3, Dorkbot - 126 sec
This is the 3rd gallery show for Dorkbot Seattle, this time at 911 Media Arts. The rotating black/green device is mine, "Faradic Revolution." (The final version was adjusted differently.)
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: dorkbot seattle amasci art kinetic sculpture sculpting beaty faradic revolution
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| Simple generator - 463 sec
http://amasci.com/coilgen/ Build this ultra-simple AC electric generator from magnets, wire, and cardboard. (And a big nail!) Light a small lightbulb, or flash a red LED.
This demonstrates how generators work. Now if you want a more useful device, use a small DC motor as a generator, since it has much better magnetics design. All motors are generators. Figure out how to spin a motor's shaft, and you can make a small powerful generator. Or... figure out how to convert the cardboard generator into a motor!
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: generator physics magnet magnets amasci electricity science fair coil experiment experiments tutorial
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| Dry Ice: is it LETHALLY DANGEROUS? - 271 sec
Between "Genuine danger" and "Raving Safety Paranoia" there must be some sensible middle ground. Dry ice is fun. Figure out a way to handle it safely.
Buy dry ice from suppliers listed in your yellow pages phone book for about $1 per pound. Or in Seattle, get it from QFC grocery, in the seafood section.
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: science physics c02 dry ice amasci fog carbon dioxide
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| Bare-handed bottle smash - 135 sec
DANGEROUS DEMONSTRATION! If you wear a ring, you might shatter the bottle and slice your hand. And sometimes the whole bottle breaks into razor-edged shrapnel.
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It's quite easy to blow the bottom out of glass bottles... if you know the secret. Even wine bottles sometimes work. But not cider jugs, since the pressure peak is too small if the square inches is large.
That vacuum bottle at the start? I made it as follows. (DANGER, explosion hazard!) Find a bottle with a lid, one which is short enough to fit inside a microwave oven. Get an ice cube, save it for later. First de-gas some water by boiling it on the stove for about half an hour. Fill your glass bottle almost full with the boiling hot water. (Careful! The bottle may shatter!) Place a wooden stick inside, then cook it on high in your microwave oven until it starts boiling again (several minutes.) Now remove the wood stick and place the lid loosely on top of the bottle. Cook on medium for several minutes, this replaces the air with live steam as well as heating the metal lid to 100C. Now using gloves, suddenly pop open the microwave door, grab the bottle and screw down the lid, then place the ice-cube on the lid, and put it in the oven for safety. DANGER, THE BOTTLE MIGHT EXPLODE AT THIS TIME! Leave the bottle alone and stay far from the oven. With luck it will cool down without any problem, and the air above the water will have been replaced by a good vacuum.
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: physics demo demos demonstrations cavitation vacuum science amasci hydraulics fluid dynamics
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| Kitten attack - 97 sec
For Lillian
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: cute kittens kitten attack
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| Stupid steady-cam tricks 4: outside, & star wars - 136 sec
Walk fast while holding your camera a few inches from a surface. Now flip the image vertically in Moviemaker. You'll get a rats' eye view of your backyard... or convert your ceiling into the Deathstar shaft from Star Wars.
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: steady cam steadicamvb tutorial video science amasci camera cameraman
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| Fantagraphics' new store - 77 sec
Fantagraphics comics at long last has a store out in the three-dee world. (Well actually you could always go down to their shipping warehouse for good deals in their damaged books room. If you could find the place.)
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags:comics fantagraphics comix underground undergrounds crumb woodring hernandes love rockets
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| Ascomycetes: cup fungus Aleuria aurantia - 175 sec
Disused for years, this old truck has mushrooms growing in its damp rugs and newspapers.
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: science biology bio fungus fungi mushrooms witches butter ascomycetes spores filth
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| High voltage "Air threads" - 379 sec
http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/airthred.html Invisible filaments of high voltage "electric wind" are seen to disturb a thin fog layer made with warm water and dry ice. Get the HV power supply from http://amasci.com/emotor/negion.html
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags:voltage amasci science physics electric wind electrostatic electrostatics static threads
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| Thermal IR cat... had kittens! - 118 sec
The kitten from "FLIR hot kitten tracks," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ-8yFgWt-c , just had six kittens of her own.
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags:kittens FLIR infrared thermal camera physics amasci
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| Magnetic field viewer - 316 sec
Suspended steel filaments make three-dimensional magnetic fields visible. See http://amasci.com/electrom/statbotl.html
I came up with this one for the Electronics exhibit at Museum of Science, but it ended up as a build-it device for science teachers.
I also discovered that baby oil slowly pushes its way through glued plexiglas joints. If you build an 8" cube of thick plexiglas and fill it with baby oil, a few months later you notice that it's half empty! And the other half is soaked into all the books on the shelf below! AND IT'S A SHELF IN A COLLEAGUE'S OFFICE!!! :)
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags:magnet magnetic field fields physics science demonstration demo
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| Dry ice chips w/interesting flow patterns - 153 sec
Get dry ice in the Seattle area at QFC supermarkets. It's about $1.00 per pound, in the seafood section. Bring a styrofoam cooler. Otherwise check your yellow pages under Dry Ice, or phone various supermarkets.
Dry ice creates water-fog droplets which become trapped in the viscous thin "boundary layer" of air above a dark water surface. LOOKS COOL! Long ago at the U. of Rochester we had nerd parties with the SF society, D&D gamers, etc. I'd supply a block of dry ice as one major piece of entertainment. (Makes big booms when, ahem, misused.) Finally I built some official equipment: painting a cookie sheet black. Years later I used this phenomenon to demonstrate the gas clouds around rotating comet nuclei. Also see a weird electrostatic effect:
THREADLIKE ELECTRIC WIND
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX3dVpK23xo
http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/airthred.html
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: science physics demo amasci demonstration co2 dry ice comet nucleus nuclei solar system
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| Self-pumped vacuum capacitor effect - 297 sec
An attempt to reclaim a lost Nikola Tesla idea-sequence!
The air pressure within a tiny metal-walled chamber full of glowing plasma slowly falls. Air turns to solid oxides/nitrides, leaving vacuum behind. It's a "Tesla coil" vacuum pump with no moving parts. Nickky T. apparently knew about this, and used the effect to pump down his x-ray tubes in the days before other vacuum pumps (Sprengel, etc.,) had any hope of reaching the required low pressures for X-rays. Other stuff at http://amasci.com/weird/wtext.html
Handheld Tesla coil from http://www.teachersource.com/ElectricityAndMagnetism/TeslaCoils.aspx , or search eBay for "violet wand."
Auteur : wbeaty
Tags: science physics tesla coil plasma high voltage weird
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