All physicsfun toys

Vintage Blacklight Poster: Escher

Fun vintage posters can be found here: 

From Etsy: BUY NOW: Blacklight Poster Escher

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Vintage Blacklight Poster: a stunning psychedelic era poster from 1971 glows brightly under a vintage blacklight from the same year. This amazing silkscreen uses fluorescent pigments (new tech in the 1960s) that absorb ultraviolet light and then re-emit the energy in visible photons. Design based on M. C. Escher’s black and white 1952 wood engraving print “Dragon”. 

Vortices in a Kalliroscope

Click this link: for the best Kalliroscope currently in production and available.

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Vortices in a Kalliroscope: rheoscopic fluid reveals the intricate and beautiful turbulence induced in an enclosed fluid by rotation of the container. The initial acceleration of the fluid during initial spin-up is shown here in 240fps slow motion. Invented and produced by artist and inventor Paul Matisse in the 1970s, suspended microscopic flat crystals of guanine reflect light and allow visualization of the fluid's motion. This rheoscopic fluid is special in that the guanine crystals are the same density as the tetrachloroethylene liquid so the crystals never settle to the bottom making the fluid reactive to showing the slightest movement. 

Lenticular Lens Decoder

This item came to me in my Curiosity Box subsciption:

Get (or give!) a Curiosity Box subscription here: JOIN NOW: The Curiosity Box

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

See also this similar device on CD art! Cassadaga by Bright Eyes

Lenticular Lens Decoder: Carefully align and slide this transparent sheet of horizontal prisms over this card of fine print and a hidden image of Inq the @thecuriositybox mascot is revealed through a type of Moiré pattern interference. This 70 lens per inch sheet and specially printed card is part of a lenticular optics kit that came as part of my winter @thecuriositybox- amazing and fun!


Carved Heart Minerals that Glow

Similar mineral carvings available here:

From Etsy: BUY NOW: Fluorescent Pink Calcite Heart

From Etsy: BUY NOW: Phosphorescent Septaria Heart

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

You will also want an awesome UV flashlight like this one:
From Amazon: BUY NOW: High Power UV Light

Ultraviolet Valentines: carved from natural minerals these hearts glow with bright fluorescence and (swipe) an afterglow of phosphorescence. When exposed to long wavelength UV light, the pink calcite heart converts the ultraviolet energy into photons of bright red light. The two smaller hearts (swipe) are carved from septarian nodules with honey calcite which fluoresces in pale green, and bands of dark brown argonite which surprisingly glow pale white with an eerie afterglow from phosphorescence when the UV light is switched off. 

Interactive Logic Gate Display

Get this device here:

From Etsy: BUY NOW: Interactive Logic Gate Display

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Interactive Logic Gate Display: the most basic four binary/Boolean logic operations that are the fundamental components of modern computers- presented here appropriately on a standard green printed circuit board (PCB) complete with the truth table for each device. These logic gates are the basic building blocks of any logic circuit, from multiplexers, arithmetic logic units, and computer memory to full microprocessors which may contain hundreds of millions of such gates on a microchip. An educational, elegant, and fun design by Tyler Jacobs. 

Crushmetric Pen

Available here:

From Crushmetric: BUY NOW: Crushmetric Pen

From Art of Play: BUY NOW: Switch Pen

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Crushmetric Switch Pen: functional kinetic art based on materials science and tessellation origami techniques. The crushed state can be reversed over and over in this incredible design by artist/inventor Noah Deledda, also known for his similar sculptures created from aluminum cans. New wonderful and affordable physics art that is also a practical ballpoint pen.


Indochinite Tektite Collection

A wide variety of tektite samples available here:

From Etsy: BUY NOW: Tektites 

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Wikipedia has good details on tektites as natural glass objects from meteor impacts.

Indochinite Collection: tektites from the Australasian strewnfield found mostly in Australia and Indonesia. Unique non-volcanic natural glass produced by an asteroid impact! Not the meteor itself but blobs of melted earth that went airborne and cooled in flight. Note the variation in shapes resulting from how fast the molten blobs were spinning as they cooled- surface tension pulls the liquid glass into spheres for slow rotation, faster rotation produces dumbbell shapes with two lobes, and the teardrop shapes are from half of very fast spinning blobs that stretched and broke in two.

Kinetic Sandscapes by KB

Sandscape art from Klaus Bösch available here:

From Amazon: BUY NOW: Sandscapes by KB

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Follow this link to learn more about Mr. Bösch's art (since 1988)

Kinetic Sandscape: by Klaus Bösch, aka “The Sandman”, the originator of the sand+water+bubble form of these kinetic art pieces. The phenomenon of spontaneous stratification is a striking feature of these Sandpictures. Typically pouring stuff together results in further mixing, yet here, when the sand mixture descends through a gap in the air bubbles, the resulting pile is ordered into sorted layers. The larger rounded dark grains separate from the smaller sharp-edged white grains forming the layers you see here. The darker grains alone would stack into a steeper pile (larger angle of repose) than the white which would form a less steep pile. The stratification process is a slow one in this device, here each transformation takes about 40 minutes or more- shown here using iPhone time lapse. 


Spark Science

Cake decoration sparklers available here:

Fron Etsy: BUY NOW: Small Sparkler Fireworks

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Spark Science: the bright flashes of light emitted from a common sparkler are tiny bits of burning iron metal which can be caught and collected with a simple piece of paper as a net. These tiny metal bits are hot (more than 1000 °C, 1800 °F) and become molten where surface tension then pulls them into spheres before they cool- seen here at 300x magnification. Although the sparks are very hot, they can’t burn paper (or skin) because they carry very little thermal energy due to their tiny mass- they cool very quickly. Fun firework physics!

Skew Dice (d6 and d12)

Get these skew dice here:

From Amazon: BUY NOW: Skew d6 set
From Amazon: BUY NOW: Skew d12 set

Click here for other amazing dice.

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Skew Dice (d6 and d12): these dice are skewed- but their odds aren’t! These unusually shaped dice are completely fair- roll them and the probability of outcomes are identical to a standard set of dice. The odd shapes of the skew d6s are a special type of polyhedra called asymmetric trigonal trapezohedra, and these d12s are tetrahedic pentagon dodecahedrons (swipe). These skew forms come in right and left handed versions(swipe twice) and these sets come with one of each mirror image. What allows these shapes to be fair like a cube has to do with their property of being isohedral, where each face of an object will map onto all other faces via a symmetry of the object. Manufactured by The Dice Lab team of Robert Fathauer and Henry Segerman.


Sand Snowman Paperweight Toy

Similar sand toys available here:

From Amazon: BUY NOW: Sand Paperweight Toys

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Sand Holiday Paperweight Toy: physics of granular materials- matter with unique properties between those of solids and liquids- as demonstrated with this simple toy. Granular materials, such as the sand in this toy, flow but also stack with a characteristic “angle of repose” as can be seen here as pyramid like ridges that form over the images of Santa and winter wonder.

 

Crystal Lollipopter Kinetic Art

Get this device here (comes with both a Lolipopter and Helicone):

From Amazon: BUY NOW: Automated Base playableART

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

See also: Lolliopter and Helicone

Stepper Motor Kinetic Sculpture: this base provides a pulse of rotational energy to drive the transformation of a Helicone or Lollipopter kinetic toy. Short bursts of spin impart angular momentum to the "petals" which then rotate until an internal mechanism stops their motion with predetermined spacing, and a helix transforms to an abstract pine cone- a pulse in the opposite direction returns the helix configuration. Comes with a cool dome to keep the dust off (or to provide safe operation in case you own a cat). A creation of artist/designer John Edmark and produced by PlayableART.


Tesseract Projection

Get this CNC machined math art here: 

From AltDynamic: BUYNOW: Hypercube/Tesseract

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Tesseract Projection: a shadow of the 4-dimensional analogue to the cube, also called a hypercube or 8-cell. A tesseract(4D) is to a cube(3D) as a cube is to a square(2D). This piece of mathematical art is CNC machined from a solid piece of aluminum and anodized black- a representation, including perspective, of one possible shadow a hypercube could cast into 3D space. Multidimensional mathematics are often used in the formulations of physics, and visualizations such as this one help give insights. Another amazing creation from @altdynamic design studio.

Magnetic Flux Gyro

Magnetic Flux Gyroscope art and other amazing science inspired jewelry available here:

From Foxtail Jewelry: BUY NOW: Kinetic Magnetic Pendants

From Foxtail Jewelry: BUY NOW: Tabletop Magnetic Kinetic Art

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Magnetic Flux Gyroscope: kinetic art on a stand (or on a chain)- physics you can wear, rendered in brass or silver by @foxtailjewelry in collaboration with @physicsfun! Two half-sphere neodymium magnets on chains remain suspended under centripetal acceleration - connected by the invisible but tactile force of magnetic fields. Honored to have this concept featured in the gallery of @foxtailjewelry.

Gyro-Carousel

Get this unique toy and amny other whimsical spinnign tops from this store:

From Etsy: BUY NOW: Gyro-Carousel Globe Tops

Note: this site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Gyro-Carousel: two terrestrial globe spin tops of the same mass hang balanced on the ends of a beam such that their rotational motion is allowed to transfer to the system as a whole. The tops are set to spin as usual, but here small neodymium magnets are embedded in the tops of their stems which allows them to connect and hang from metal pins in the beam. The angular momentum of each top is slowly transferred to the rotation of the system by the slight force of friction acting at the attachment point on the beam produced by the stem of the spinning top. Studies show that approximately 1% of the original rotational kinetic energy of the tops is transferred to the rotating beam, not much- but enough to produce this interesting effect. A design by physicist Christian Ucke and a product of KreiselArt (Ulrich Büker).