Iridescent Inclusion in Quartz
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From Etsy: BUY NOW: Rainbow Inclusion Quartz Specimens
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Iridescent Inclusion: this chunk of quartz has multiple “rainbow inclusions” that flicker brightly in and out of view depending on the angle between the illuminating light source and the eye. The amazing color banding emanates from very thin cracks in the crystal which allows light to be reflected from two surfaces that are only separated by 1/2 the wavelength of visible light (in the range of 500 nm), allowing light waves of various colors to undergo constructive and deconstructive interference, like that of oil on water. The thickness of the crack gets a tiny bit wider from one side to the other resulting in the banding of colors as light of different wavelengths cancel out or reinforce in intensity. The physics of thin film interference “frozen” within this freeform chunk of natural quartz.
Magnetic Fidget Physics
I got this fun device here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Haptic Magnet Toys
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Magnetic Fidget Physics: iron rich ball bearings temporarily become dipole magnets and repel each other- and when manipulated they keep their distance. In this design the ball bearings snap into place above one of the seven neodymium magnets embedded within the 3D printed disk.
Vintage Blacklight Poster: Escher
Fun vintage posters can be found here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Blacklight Poster Escher
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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”.
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
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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!
Ruby Asterism
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.
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
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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
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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.
Indochinite Tektite Collection
A wide variety of tektite samples available here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Tektites
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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.
d6 Cube Spin Tops
Get these d6 tops here:
Fron Etsy: BUY NOW: d6 Spin Tops
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d6 Cube Tops: symmetry axes are often associated with interesting physics. For instance- a cube can spin like a top. Here we see that d6s can spin in a very stable fashion.
Tiny Top
Get this tiny brass top here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Tiny Spinning Top
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Tiny Top: the smallest spinning top in my collection so far. Made of brass and works well!
Spark Science
Cake decoration sparklers available here:
Fron Etsy: BUY NOW: Small Sparkler Fireworks
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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!
Gyro-Carousel
Get this unique toy and amny other whimsical spinnign tops from this store:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Gyro-Carousel Globe Tops
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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).
Fidget Star
Get this fun piece in metallic PLA here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Fidget Star
Or print it yourself:
From Thingverse: Fidget Star .stl file
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Fidget Star: 12 nested and captured 8-point stars create this wonderfully satisfying kinetic art manipulation toy. Each star is trapped within the next through ingenious design and 3D printing. A creation of maker and artist Chuck Hilliard @chuuckaduuck.
Fluid Cell Kaleidoscope
Vintage Kaleidsocpes by this artist can be found here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Kaleidoscopes by Reynolds
See more: Amazing Kaleidoscopes
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Fluid Cell Kaleidoscope: flowing immiscible fluids provide a psychedelic vibe in this vintage kaleidoscope from the 1970s by artist Peach Reynolds. A simple equilateral triangle mirror system creates the hexagonal lattice structure in this latest addition to my kaleidoscope collection. Invented by the famous Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), the kaleidoscope is an ultimate physics toy and entire field of artistic endeavor.
Wobbler Roller
Get this very nice laser cut version here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Desk Wobbler
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Check out my posts on similar geometric objects: developable rollers
Wobbler Roller: a very simple toy today- two half circle perimeters affixed at right angles which surprisingly can then roll in a straight line with a peculiar wobble motion. When rolling, a wobbler always touches the table top at two points which could be connected by a straight line, and forms the frame of the geometric shape called a sphericon (featured in a previous post).
Marble Run 3D Print
A high quality 3D print (with steel marbles) available here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Marble Run Fun
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Or print it yourself: From Thingiverse: Cyclone Marble Run
Marble Run 3D Print: a design that looks like it came off the page of a Dr. Seuss book has rolling marbles doing tricks down 3 tracks as potential energy of gravity is converted to kinetic energy. In this mini-marble run a fingertip (or end of a pen) powers an auger conveyor (Archimedes' Screw) to bring the marbles back to the top. A wonderful and whimsical designed by Øyvind Kaurstad.
Soma and Rhoma Puzzles
The Rhoma Cube is a vintage item and can sometimes be found on Etsy
Soma Cubes are available in wide viariety:
From Amazon: BUY NOW: Soma Cube
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Rhoma Puzzle
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SOMA and RHOMA Puzzles: Replace every cube in the Soma puzzle with a rhombohedron to create the Rhoma puzzle- where the seven slanted pieces now make a larger rhombohedron. Here I’ve painted the corresponding Soma and Rhoma pieces to match on these sister puzzles that share identical edge lengths. While there are 240 ways to make the larger cube from the 7 Soma pieces, there is only one solution for the 7 Rhoma pieces. The original Soma Cube is a math toy has an interesting connection to physics- invented by Danish scientist and artist Piet Hein who claimed that this puzzle idea came to him as he was listening to a lecture on Quantum Mechanics by Werner Heisenberg in 1933. The seven pieces are all the ways 3 or 4 cubes can be joined, such that each piece has at least one inside corner.