Get one here:
From Amazon: BUY NOW Low Temp Stirling Engine
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Stirling Engine: low temperature difference engine turns a fraction of the heat of hot tap water into mechanical motion. For this engine the heat source is the hot tap water, and the heat sink is the room temperature air. Really nice model and super inexpensive for a display engine of this type.
This vintage card is from the 1980s.
Click here: to find more Anamorphic Images and Devices
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Mirror Anamorphosis: perspective often depends on the lens (or in this case, mirror) that is looked through. This vintage card from 1984 contains a cylindrical mirror anamorphic image. Lady Liberty is revealed by bending the flexible Mylar mirror in to a half cylinder.
Get an inexpesive star ruby here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Star Ruby Synthetic Gemstone
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Ruby Asterism: illuminating this cabochon of synthetic ruby reveals a six point star with a center that moves with the point light source. The rayed star is form of chatoyancy, where the light is scattered by microscopic parallel crystal fibers of rutile (titanium oxide) that grew within the red corundum mineral (aluminum oxide with trace chromium). This is similar to tiger eye chatoyancy, but here the rutile fibers grew along the three different directions of the main crystal symmetry.
Amazing application of high resolution far field holograms. The only available source I know of for projection holograms at this high resolution is this supplier of industrial samples
From MaterialSampleShop.com: Diffractive Optical Element Sample
Get this yellow 591nm laser pointer here:
From eBay: BUY NOW: Yellow Laser Pointer
Need the main colors of laser pointer? Incredibly, you can get 3 (one of each) for under $20 (including S&H):
From Amazon: BUY NOW: Red+Green+Purple Laser Pointer
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Yellow Laser Pointer: diode lasers with wavelengths of 589 nm (golden yellow) have recently become less expensive, and will produce stunning far-field transmission holographic images as seen here. The production of yellow frequencies from diode lasers is very complicated and involves two separate infrared laser diodes (1,064 nm and 1,342 nm) which are directed through a nonlinear optical crystal that sums these two IR frequency photons, through a quantum conversion process, into the desired 589 nm photons. So amazing that such tech can fit within the length of a pen and be powered by AAA batteries!
Get these well made illusions here:
from Etsy: BUY NOW: Laser Cut Wood Illusions
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Moiré Kinetic Coasters: various patterns of overlaid curved spokes rotate and produce interesting illusions of motion via moiré interference effects. Each in this set of four coasters had a clear acrylic top upon which to place your drink, with intricate laser cut wood components underneath. The set includes a frame that couples each rotating center into cogs in a kinetic art gear train. Explore constructive and deconstructive interference patterns with this practical yet fun manipulable toy.
Similar color change gemstones available here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Synthetic Alexandrite
Explore propperties of minerals and gemstones with this fun jeweler's flashlight:
From Amazon: BUY NOW: Jeweler's Appraisal Flashlight
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Alexandrite Effect: dramatic color change under different light sources- seen here first under halogen incandescent light and then under cool white LED (similar to sunlight), due to selective absorption of frequencies of visible light. These two faceted crystals are synthetic gems, Tourmalike and Tourmalike+, that dramatically exhibit this effect especially under the illumination of this jeweler’s appraisal lamp that allows one to select white light with different spectra (and also UV). This phenomenon is named for the famous (and expensive) alexandrite gemstone variety of the mineral chrysoberyl.
Heart shaped version available here:
From Amazon: BUY NOW: Heart Hand Boiler
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A variety of shapes and colors are available
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW: Hand Boilers
From Amazon: BUY NOW: Hand Boilers
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Love Meter: sending ❤️ to all my followers on this Valentine’s Day- some say it’s chemistry, but physics describes the mechanism of these “love meters” which react only to the heat from the hand holding it compared to the temperature of the room. In this video the devices are placed on a piece of wood that was heated in a microwave for 30 seconds, long enough to bring it to about 97 degrees F. Also called hand boilers, or a Bouillant de Franklin, these are physics toys of blown glass that feature a reversible liquid-gas phase transition and demonstrates the relationship between temperature and pressure in an enclosed volume. The dyed fluid within each is typically dichloromethane which is in both liquid and vapor states. Heat from a hand, or from a warm surface, increases pressure in the bottom bulb pushing the liquid to the top bulb. Originally made famous by Benjamin Franklin, the first to describe the physics of its operation.
Get a siimilar light up top here:
From Amazon: BUY NOW: light up spin top
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Centripetal Switch: a very simple design allows sustained power to the LED only when the top is spinning. A floppy spring is attached to one side of the LED and when the top is spinning centripetal acceleration bends the spring to touch the metal flange to complete the circuit. Note that in operation the LED is not on the whole time, but flashes on and off due to vibrations affecting the simple spring switch contact, and when coupled with the frame rate of the camera, creates the light patterns seen here. Simple design, but lots of physics!
Get these inexpensive toys here:
From Amazon: BUY NOW: Spring Launcher Monsters
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Spring Launcher Toy: spring force vs. suction cup, or more specifically, Hooke’s law vs. fluid pressure of air. Initially the spring remains compressed (with potential energy stored) due to some part of the always present 14.7 pounds per square inch of air pressure pressing down on the flattened elastic cup. The toy suddenly launches when enough air leaks past the imperfect seal and reduces the partial vacuum under the cup, so that the spring can overcome the force of the fluid pressure of the air- rather catastrophically! So much physics behind this common toy.
Versions of the Gee Haw Whimmy Diddle available from these sources:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Hooey Stick Folk Toy
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See the other versions in my collection here: Phase Locking Folk Toys
Phase Locking Folk Toy v5: a final post in this series featuring the “Magic Twin Helicopters” toy that I found in a shop at the Tokyo airport a few years back. A helicopter themed version of the hooey stick, this time with the four rotor blades serving as the propellers. Rubbing the stick over the notches creates both vertical and horizontal vibrations- and leads to a cyclic motion of the struts in the center of each of the propellers, which begin to rotate (with some effort). See previous posts for more info on this folk toy with surprisingly complex physics.
Versions of the Gee Haw Whimmy Diddle available from these sources:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Hooey Stick Folk Toy
Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated
See the other versions in my collection here: Phase Locking Folk Toys
Wikipedia has some good details about the Hooey Stick toy.
Phase Locking Folk Toy v4: another interesting variation of the “hooey stick” toy in my collection. This one has two rotors both on the same stick- and often they will rotate in opposite directions! (Shown here in slow motion for clarity.) Just as with the regular version of this toy (see yesterday’s post) rubbing the stick over the notches creates vibrations- and can lead to an up and down motion of the shaft in the center of the rotors. The hole in each rotor is larger than the shaft, and when the shaft/notched stick is vibrating it only touches the rotor for a short time each cycle- if the timing is right the stick collides with the rotor such that friction gives it nudge with each vibration to set it spinning- and this can work either clockwise or counterclockwise. Sometimes they spin the same direction and sometimes opposite, which seems to depend on initial conditions and a bit of luck. This version, made in Taiwan, was sold in the 1980s.
Versions of the Gee Haw Whimmy Diddle available from these sources:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Hooey Stick Folk Toy
Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated
See the other versions here: Phase Locking Folk Toys
A detailed physics analysis of this toy was published in 2018 (open acess): Physics of the mechanical toy Gee-Haw Whammy Diddle
Phase Locking Folk Toy v3: spin it left or spin it right, a slight adjustment of the hands produces different results (with a bit of practice) using this modern version of the famous Gee-Haw Wimmy Diddle folk toy. Sometimes also called a Hooey Stick as a demonstrator will often claim that calling out “Gee” makes it spin to the right, or yelling “Haw” will make it spin to the left- which of course is a bunch of hooey! Left and rightward spin shown in 240fps to reduce shutter aliasing.
This vintage device was produced in the 1980s but similar devices are not hard to build. Here are (somewhat hard to find) steel balls with holes that will work nicely to construct pendulums:
From Amazon: BUY NOW Drilled Spheres
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See my other physics toys featuring pendulums
Stop & Go Pendulums: a vintage desk toy from the 1980s that features a set of coupled pendulums for which kinetic energy transfers between the pendulums in a dramatic and cyclic way. The design is very simple- the pendulums are identical in size and mass and hang connected to the same strand of string. (Try making your own!) The pattern of stop and go repeats until the initial energy is dissipated by friction. This device was sold as the “Magic Motion” desk toy by Newton Products Corporation in New York.
Created by Tom Lawton to meticulous standards, available to order:
From beuplifted.co.uk: Order NOW: Wonder Kinetic
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Crystal Wonder: a laser etched version of the kinetic ribbon sculpture that shimmers within a cylinder of glass. Connecting rotational and translational motion with Lissajous type forms, the Wonder kinetic sculpture uses rotation to produce aesthetic fluid motions that seem incongruous. Swipe to see the original Wonder metalic ribbon creation by artist and inventor Tom Lawton.
Get this fun lamp here:
From Amazon: BUY NOW: Levitation Lamp
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Levitation Lamp: tapping the floating spherical magnet turns this LED lamp off and on in this interesting design. The magnet floats a couple centimeters from the surface of the base when plugged in, and feels springy to the touch. Within the base is a control system with adjustable electromagnet coils in a feedback loop with Hall effect sensors which allow for fine tuning of a magnetic field to precisely balance the pull of gravity.
Learn more about this recent math dicovery here: An aperiodic monotile (arXiv)
Althogh the math says they can tile the plane, getting them to do so is more challenging than one might think!
Get a set of laser cut hat tiles here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: "the Hat" monotile set
See other aperoidic tilings in my collection.
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Aperiodic Monotile: this newly discovered 13 sided shape, named “the hat”, will tessellate a plane to infinity, similar to how squares or hexagons can tile out with no gaps. However the hat tiles the plane aperiodically- if one tries to shift a part of a hat tiling, the shifted part will not align or match up with any other part of the same tiling- all the way out to infinity! The fact that aperiodic tessellations exist at all is pretty amazing, and Sir Roger Penrose (Nobel prize in physics 2020) is also famous for discovering a pair of regularly shaped polygons that tile in this aperiodic way. However it was not clear until a few weeks ago if a single shaped tile could tessellate aperiodically when the hat was described in a paper by Smith, Myers, Kaplan, and Goodman-Strauss uploaded to arXiv March 20.
These amazing scluptures from Bathesheba Grossman available here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Math Sculptures
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Symmetry Sculptures: the Quintrino with 12 identical interlocking starfish, and the Metatrino with 6 identical connected four armed stars- based on the symmetries of the dodecahedron and the cube. Two examples of the amazing work of artist Bathsheba Grossman, a pioneer in creating such intricate mathematical forms.