Mechanics
| Title | Abstract | ||||||
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| English
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te Reo
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Visit | Type | Physics NCEA |
Science NCEA & SciNZ |
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| Newton Scales | Bathroom scale calibrated in Newtons for proper weight measurements. |  |
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Notes | |||
| Faith-in-Physics Pendulum | A heavy pendulum released from near a student's nose will return to the same height and not quite touch her/him. |  |
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Multimedia | |||
| Penny and Feather | Penny and feather fall with same acceleration in a vacuum. | |
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Notes | |||
| Quadratic Strings | Beads on a string separated by quadratic distances hit the ground at equal time intervals. | |
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Video | |||
| Weight in Free Fall | Scale holding object reads zero in free fall. | |
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Notes | |||
| Lift Riders | Increases and decreases in scale reading as the lift accelerates. | |
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Notes | |||
| Recording Student Motion | Have a student walk to and from a sonic ranger while observing plots of position, velocity, and acceleration. | |
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Notes | |||
| Average Speed Puzzle (Large version) |
Even though the two balls fall through the same vertical distance and have the same initial and final speeds, one ball reaches the end of its track first because it has a higher average speed. | |
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Notes | |||
| Average Speed Puzzle (OHP version) |
Even though the two balls fall through the same vertical distance and have the same initial and final speeds, one ball reaches the end of its track first because it has a higher average speed. | |
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Notes | |||
| Persistence of Motion (Air Track): Newton 1 | A single cart on the air track moves with nearly constant velocity. | |
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Video | |||
| Acceleration of Cart by a Hanging Mass | Cart on track accelerated by hanging mass. Data acquisition via smart pulley. |  |
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Video | |||
| Acceleration of a Fan Cart on an Air Track | A small fan accelerates and decelerates a cart on an air track. | |
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Video | |||
| Motion on a Large Air Track | Collisions and Newton's Laws are studied on a large air track. | |
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Notes | |||
| Balance Fork and Spoon on a Match | Surprising stable equilibrium point for a fork and spoon appearing to be suspended unnaturally by a match. | |
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Notes | |||
| String Tension | Tension in a string supporting a 1 Kg mass, a 1 Kg mass hanging over a pulley, and two 1 Kg masses over two pulleys is always 10 N. | |
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Notes | |||
| Bed of Nails | Lie down on a bed of nails and have someone smash a cinder block on your chest. | |
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Video | |||
| Newton's Cradle or Collision Balls | Suspended balls transfer momentum from one to the next. | |
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Notes | |||
| Basketball and Tennis Ball (new version) |
Tennis ball on top of basketball dropped on a hard floor. The tennis ball recoils to a greater height than it was dropped from. Includes high-speed camera footage of the bounces. | |
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Video | |||
| 2D Motion on an Air Table | Puck moves in 2D, colliding with wire boundaries. Analysed with VideoPoint. | |
Notes | ||||
| Simultaneous Fall | Two balls simultaneously dropped and projected horizontally hit the floor together. | |
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Notes | |||
| Standing Waves (new) |
An AC electric current is used to excite standing waves in a wire passed over a magnet. | |
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Notes | |||
| Tuning Fork Resonance | Two matched tuning forks are mounted on resonance boxes. Hit one and the other vibrates too. | |
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Notes | |||
| On Yer Bike (The Spinning Bicycle Wheel) |
A spinning bicycle wheel balances like magic while dangling from a string. The spinning wheel also causes a student to spin on a rotating stool. | |
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Multimedia | ||
| He Wīra Hurihuri | |||||||
| Air Table Collisions | Momentum and energy conservation during air table collisions. | |
Notes | ||||
| Loop-the-loop (new) |
A ball rolls down an incline and around a vertical circle only if it starts with at least a minimum height. | |
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Notes | |||
| Rotational Inertia Wands | Students twirl equal mass wands, one with the mass at the ends and the other with the mass at the middle. | |
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Notes | |||
| Water Rocket (new) |
The trajectory of a water rocket is analyzed in some detail | |
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Video | |||
| Spinning Rattleback and Angular Momentum | The strange behaviour of the spinning rattleback is seen to be consistent with angular momentum conservation on an air table. | |
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Multimedia | |||
| Centripetal Force Water Parabola (new) |
Water in a spinning tank forms a parabolic surface | |
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Notes | Tertiary | ||