If you like to drop things because you want to measure what happens to them, consider using the drop tower at the University of Bremen, Germany. Pertinent info abounds. Read Geoff Manaugh’s essay in Gizmodo (“This Tower Exists Solely for Dropping Things“). Read the tower authority’s attractive brochure, if you like — read that in German (“Experimente unter Schwerelosigkeit”) […]
Tag: drop
The classic shoot-the-monkey demonstration, anew
Daniel Rosenberg (whom you will see in the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony next month) and his colleagues at the Harvard Science Center staged and shot (anew!) this brief video of a classic physics demo: This is a demonstration of the independence of the horizontal and vertical components of the velocity of a projectile. Often referred […]
Viscosity in the news, twice (pitch and molasses)!
‘Midst the ebb and flow and eddies of the news, now and then people pay attention to viscosity. Today serves up two items, each of which is derived from Ig Nobel Prize-winning work. 1.”Trinity College experiment succeeds after 69 years” says the headline in RTE news (which also has a video report accompanying the text) […]
The slow pitch of excitement
Robin McKie, in The Observer, chronicles the slowly, slowly, slowly mounting excitement about the Ig Nobel Prize-winning [physics prize, 2005] Australian pitch-drop experiment: In terms of output, Queensland University’s pitch drop study – the world’s oldest laboratory experiment – has been stunningly low. Only eight drops have emerged from the lump of pitch installed in the university’s physics building […]