Educational Innovations

Polage Display

Austine has an online gallery of her amazing work. 
From Austine Studios: Polarized Light Art 

This kit has everything needed to make your own polarization art: 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Polarizing Film Kit 
The kit also includes a birefringent crystal, colorful optically active mica sheets, and a polarimetry demo that reveals when structures are under stress. A great value for so much physics fun! 

Sometimes Austine's work can be found on eBay: 
From eBay: BUY NOW Polage by Austine 

Here is a very nice discussion about polarization that pertains to Polage: Experiments With Polarized Light by Donald E. Simanek 

Polage Display: art with polarized light using polarizing sheets and cellulose to create changing forms and colors. Rotation of the filter allows the artist to produce colorful metamorphosis. This piece was created by Austine Wood Comarow- the main developer of this art form- as part of a campaign to promote Maui Jim polarized sunglasses. Light has an orientation, denoted as polarization, and a polarizing filter can be used to block certain orientations. The colors in polage come from how the molecular structure of plastics can rotate the polarization of any light that passes through- but only light corresponding to yellows and greens gets rotated in plastic, reds and blues not so much. Polage uses different layers of plastic to rotate the light, and then polarizing filters are added to allow only certain frequencies (colors) of light through.

Mega Tippe-Top

Here is the mega tippe-top compared to typical tippe-tops on the market and a US quarter dollar:

Limited quantities available from the Spinning Top and Yo-Yo Museum of Burlington, Wisconsin 

Educational Innovations has reasonably priced wood tippe-tops in their shop: 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Tippe-Tops 
From Amazon: BUY NOW Tippe-Tops 

Mega Tippe-Top: spinning things often have surprising physics. This giant version of the famous flip-over top must be launched with a string pull to give it enough rotational energy to make the flip. It is also placed on a concave mirror to keep it from wandering too far. Friction with the mirror provides a torque that acts on the existing angular momentum of the top to flip it over. 

Viewing the Feel Flux Magnetic Field

Get this device here: 
From feelflux.com: BUY NOW Feel Flux 

Get some magnetic viewing film here: 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Magnetic Viewing Film 

From Amazon: BUY NOW Magnetic Viewing Film

Viewing the Feel Flux Magnetic Field: Magneview film reveals the powerful field of the neodymium magnet as it falls with terminal velocity through the copper tube of the Feel Flux toy.


Super Absorbent Polymer

Get some of these grow-spheres here: 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Growing Spheres 

Super Absorbent Polymer: poly-acrylamide polymer crystals are able to absorb up to 200 times their volume of water. Here seven small spheres, approximately 4mm in diameter, were immersed in water for three hours, after which they were slightly more than 23mm across. The final gel sphere is more than 99.5% water!


Tea Candle Steam Engine

Get one from these fine sources: 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Tea Candle Steam Engine 
From Amazon: BUY NOW Tea Candle Steam Engine 

Tea Candle Steam Engine: a functional piston steam engine complete with boiler and flywheel. Takes about 2 minutes to get going after the candle is lit. The invention that powered the industrial revolution on a desktop! Made by Wilesco. 

Pop Pop Boat

Get one here: 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Pop-Pop Boat 
From Amazon: BUY NOW Pop-Pop Boats 

Wikipedia has the details on the physics and history of this little steamboat toy 

Pop-Pop Boat: birthday candle powered, super simple steam engine named after the sound it makes when operating. The engine is just a metal box, heated by the candle, with two pipes coming out of it. Steam builds up pushing water out with an explosive pop- which then creates a vacuum sucking more water in to repeat the process. Patented in 1915 these were very popular in the 1940's.

Nitinol Memory Wire

Get a sample from these sources: 
From Ebay: BUY NOW Nitinol Memory Wire shape sample 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Nitinol Memory Wire Spring 

Nitinol Memory Wire: this alloy of nickel and titanium can be trained to a specific shape at high temperature- then bend it up at room temperature and it will snap back into shape when exposed to moderate heat such as hot tea water. This remarkable property is a type of solid state reversible phase transition known as a martensitic transformation. 
 


Polarizing Filter Black Wall Illusion

Amazon lists acrylic tubing at a reasonable price: get a 2 foot long tube with an inner diameter of 1.5 inches for about $17 US. This will accommodate a large marble for the demonstration. 
From Amazon: BUY NOW Acrylic Tubing 

For a 1.5 inch inner diameter (3.8 cm) tube you will need a 10 inch (25.4 cm) wide sheet to complete a cylinder inside the tube. 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Polarizing Film

Polarizing Filter Black Wall Illusion: two sheets of polarizing film (with polarization axes oriented at 90 degrees to each other) create this illusion inside an acrylic tube. Physics magic!

Euler's Disk

Get one here: 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Euler's Disk and Accessories 
From Amazon: BUY NOW Euler's Disk 

Wikipedia has an excellent introduction to the physics of Euler's Disk 

Eulers Disk: (best with sound on) this toy exhibits the motion of a “sprolling” coin, a motion that combines spinning and rolling. Designed with a large mass and very smooth edge, this device takes close to 3 minutes to come to rest- and amazingly, the contact point between the disk and the mirror can reach a speed of more that 200 mph! This video catches the first and last parts of this 2 minute and 42 second run, with two cuts to 240fps slow motion to show the curious motion. Watch the end with the sound on! 

Revolution

This vintage toy can sometimes be found on eBay. 
Quality models of the modern version of this physics toy are still available 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Magnetic Levitator 
From Amazon: BUY NOW Magnetic Levitator 

Revolution: vintage 2D magnetic levitation- permanent magnets can only produce static equilibrium along two dimensions- here a glass mirror constrains the third dimension, and makes for a nice bearing surface for rotation. This item was sold in the 1990s in mall shops such as Natural Wonders. 


Beat Interference Chimes

Get a set here: 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Beat Interference Chimes 

Wikipedia: Features a nice introduction and helpful graphics explaining the physics of this beat interference phenomena. 

Beat Interference Chimes: these aluminum chimes resonate at slightly different frequencies. When both chimes are struck the sound waves interfere both constructively and deconstructively producing the interesting wavering sound called a beat. The beat frequency- the rate at which the sound goes loud to quiet- is equal to the difference between the frequencies of the two chimes. The same physics applies when tuning a guitar using fifth and seventh fret harmonics.

Pencil Hyperboloid

Choose your color and get one here: 
From Etsy: BUY NOW 
Hyperboloid Pencil Holder 

don't forget a set of pencils: 
From Amazon: BUY NOW 
Colored Pencil Sets 

Better yet- get some thermochromic color changing pencils! 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW 
Heat-Sensitive Pencils 

Pencil Hyperboloid: a perfect gift for any math teacher- the precisely oriented holes in this base direct 16 pencils to reveal a hyperboloid, the 3D surface traced by revolving a diagonal(skew) line, the outline of which is the conic section of the hyperbola. A doubly ruled surface for any desktop!

Viscoelastic Melting Snowman

Get the kit here! 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Melting Snowman Kit 

Viscoelastic "Melting Snowman": non-newtonian flow is demonstrated by these blobs of viscoelastic silicon polymer (aka Silly Putty) in the shape of snowman- if force is applied over a short period of time the substance shows elastic properties (bounces like a superball), but if the force is applied slowly the substance flows like a viscous liquid (flattens under gravity over a few hours as shown here). Thus this snowman does not melt because it is already liquid, one that flows slowly though. Mostly sold as a toy, Silly Putty was discovered after mixing boric acid with silicone oil during World War II in an attempt to find a rubber substitute.


The Dancing Helix

Get one here! Chose your color scheme and length, all come with the special motor and operating instructions:

From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW: Dancing Helix

The Dancing Helix: This kinetic mobile's mesmerizing motion arises from pulsed torsion waves that propagate up and down the length of a series of weighed rods connected by an elastic ribbon (which acts as a torsion spring). The waves arise by a special pulsed motor from which the strand hangs, and only spins for a second or so out of each minute. The twisting waves then constructively and deconstructively interfere creating an array of flowing motions.

Lenz's Law

Get a similar kit here: 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Eddy Current tubes

Get some magnetic viewing film here: 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Magnetic Viewing Film 

Lenz's Law: a strong neodymium magnet falls slowly down a copper bus bar as though passing through a viscous liquid. Since magnetic fields pass through copper, magneview film reveals the location of the falling dipole magnet. Moving magnetic fields from the falling magnet produce electric currents in the copper. These currents then produce magnetic fields that have the opposite polarity to the initial field. So a falling magnet makes the copper pipe briefly into an electromagnet that repels the magnet. The rectangular copper “pipe” is from a water-cooled electromagnet power supply line, 1.5 x 2 in (4 x 5 cm) in cross-section, designed to supply a steady DC current of 5000 amps. This 15” long piece weighs in at 12 lbs and has a 1/2” diameter hole for coolIng water to flow down its center. From a decommissioned particle accelerator magnet. 

Simple Polariscope

This kit has everything needed to make your own polariscope: 
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Polarizing Film Kit 
The kit also includes a birefringent crystal, colorful optically active mica sheets, and a polarimetry demo that reveals when structures are under stress. A great value for so much physics fun! 

Simple Polariscope: polarized light reveals the hidden rainbows due to internal stresses imposed on polymer materials such as these pieces of polystyrene flatware, a technique used to model stress distribution patterns in engineering. Place the polymer samples between two linear polarizer filters and the internal stresses created by the molding process during manufacturing produce colors through birefringence due to photoelasticity.