Get this device here (in your choice of color):
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Dual Threaded Bolt Print
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Dual Threaded Bolt: this 3D printed fidget toy illustrates an interesting design that may have important engineering applications in preventing loosening of fasteners. Here one nut threads on clockwise as normal- the other threads on counterclockwise on the same bolt.
precision aligned high quality front surface mirrors:
From Etsy: BUY NOW Precision Teleidoscopes
Fine art kaleidoscopes avaibable here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Fine Art Kaleidoscopes
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Wine-Themed Kaleidoscope: precision construction using surface coated mirrors set at an angle of exactly 72 degrees creates the beautiful symmetry of a five point mandala in this artisan kaleidoscope. The viewing cell is filled with shiny and colorful wine themed trinkets- grapes, vines, and other items found in and around a winery. Swipe to see more of the intricacies of the patterns produced by turning the viewing cell. Invented by the famous Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), the kaleidoscope is an ultimate physics toy and entire field of artistic endeavor.
Beautiful wood fractal art available here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: High Voltage Fractal Art
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High Voltage Wood Burn Fractal: a classic Lichtenberg fractal created by electrical discharge- in this piece artist/maker Nic Ferretti applied cobalt blue epoxy resin to fill the cavities of the burn pattern and create the look of frozen lightning. Swipe to see my attempt at this process with an old neon sign high voltage transformer using 7500 V at 20 mA. I turned the power off right before the two sides connected to get the fern-like look. The wood is slightly wetted with baking soda dissolved in tap water. WARNING high voltage can kill- do not use a transformer like this unless you are fully trained in electrical high voltage safety.
Hard to find but currently available from this source:
From Etsy: Search NOW: Meteorite Guitar Pick
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Cosmic Guitar Pick: carved from a piece of Gibeon meteorite and etched with mild acid to show the special nickel-iron crystalline structures that are only found in iron meteorites. These Widmanstatten patterns from nickel-iron cannot be produced in the lab or in any factory- the structure only forms if the metals cool at a rate of 100 degrees per million years! 2 billion+ year old heavy metal from the core of an ancient asteroid! πΈπ€
Get a smaple of labbradorite here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Polished Labradorite
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Labradorescence: the unique luster given off by the mineral labradorite that appears as a glow emanating from below the surface of the polished rock. This iridescence is due to the Schiller effect, crystals that grow in very thin layers producing colors from the diffraction of reflected light. Labradorite is a feldspar mineral first identified in Labrador Canada.
Well engineered brass spinning toys by SiriusEnigmas:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: The iTOP
From Etsy: BUY NOW: The PhiTOP
From Etsy: BUY NOW: The eTOP
From Etsy: BUY NOW: The PiTOP
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The iTOP: inverting spinning disk- the equilibrium state for a spinning thing is often different from that of the same object when stationary. When spun, the iTOP almost instantly inverts to raise its center of mass (shown in slow motion because it happens so fast). However, when the rotation speed decreases to a certain rate the system becomes unstable (shown again in slow motion) and flips again before going into a rolling/spinning motion like a coin. This top completes the set of four spin tops by astrophysicist Kenneth Brecher, all made of polished brass and themed on a mathematical constant: iTOP (square-root of -1), PhiTOP (golden ratio, φ), eTOP (base of the natural log), and the PiTOP (C/D of a circle, π).
Get ruby in matrix stones and jewelry here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Ruby Glow Stones
You will also want an awesome UV flashlight like this one:
From Amazon: BUY NOW: High Power UV Light
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Corundum (Ruby) in Matrix: the pink/red mineral inclusions in this polished sphere of fuchsite are ruby crystals. Ruby fluoresces in bright red light when exposed to long wave UV light (such as a black light), creating the illusion that the sphere is lit from within. The same fluorescent property of synthetic ruby allowed creation of the first lasers.
Get sodalite-bearing syenite river stones here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Sodalite Glow Rocks
You will also want an awesome UV flashlight like this one:
From Amazon: BUY NOW: High Power UV Light
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Sodalite Fluorescence: in daylight this rock looks like an ordinary river stone, but when illuminated with long wave ultraviolet light, patches of the mineral sodalite shine in bright orange glow. These stones are comprised of sodalite-bearing syenite, where syenite is a course grained igneous rock similar to granite but deficient in quartz. Found on the shores of Lake Superior- discovered in 2017 by Erik Rintamaki.
Get this and other beautifully crafted math themed tops here:
Fropm Etsy: BUY NOW: The eTOP
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The eTOP: an ellipsoid based on the famous Euler’s constant e, diameter 2” and thickness 2/e”- spinning magnets from the magnetic stirrer induce electric currents to flow in the copper eTOP- these currents then create their own magnetic field which opposes the magnets underneath and pushes the eTOP to spin, producing interesting motion and sound. Credit to astrophysicist Kenneth Brecher, the creator of the eTOP, PhiTOP, and this unique means of using Lenz’s Law to spin it up. This top stands up vertically (when spun with sufficient rotational velocity) due to physics similar to that of the tippe-top. The concave mirror keeps the top from wandering off of magnetic stirrer.
Get this puzzle here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Missing Edge Puzzle Card
See the simiar and amazing: Matsuyama's Puzzle
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Missing Edge Piece Puzzle: fun math involved in the design of this puzzle, which illustrates how the concept of area can challenge our intuitions. Swipe to see the similar and amazing Matsuyama’s Paradox puzzle. A precision crafted puzzle by Jeux EfceΜ game shop.
Well engineered brass spinning toys by SiriusEnigmas
From Etsy: BUY NOW: The PiTOP
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The PiTOP: this beautiful brass cylinder has a radius of 1 inch, a height of 1/π inches, and displays the first 109 digits of π on its face. Spin this disk (best with sound on) and it will demonstrate some very interesting physics involving energy transfer and conservation of angular momentum. The edges of the cylinder are rounded and engineered to exhibit an optimum motion of a “spolling” coin, a motion that combines spinning and rolling (closeup shown in 240fps). As the disk’s angle of inclination decreases the speed of the rolling increases dramatically until the contact point with the mirror is moving in excess of 200mph. From the mind of physicist Ken Brecher, inventor of the PhiTOP. Note also that with the specified height, that the volume of this cylinder is exactly 1 cubic inch!
Get this 3-color laser cut acrylic version here:
From Kadon Enterprises: BUY NOW: Stomachion Puzzle
Also a very nice multicolor acyrlic version here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Stomachion Puzzle
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Learn about the 1998 discovery of the lost writings of Archimedes (and the technology used to recover them) in this TED talk.
Ancient Stomachion Puzzle: the oldest known puzzle, discovered in the writings of the great Greek physicist and mathematician Archimedes from some 2200 years ago. The puzzle is a dissection of a square into 14 polygons, where the areas of each piece are integer multiples of each other (a curious way to slice it up). In 2003 Bill Cutler showed that there are 536 district ways to configure these pieces to make the square (five are shown here), ignoring simple rotations and reflections. Swipe to see the most famous solution, attributed to Archimedes himself, that was found in an ancient manuscript discovered only in 1998- before this date historians knew the name of the puzzle, but no one knew what it looked like. Kate Jones, the maker of this particularly aesthetic version, found that when using only three colors for the polygons, there are only 6 solutions where no two pieces of the same color touch (four solutions shown here).
Own a piece of asteroid- specimens like the one in the video are quite affordable:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Chelyabinsk Meteorite Sample
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Reccomended reading: Wikipedia- Chelyabinsk Superbolide Event
Chelyabinsk Meteorite: on this date eight years ago this piece of rock was in space. This meteorite was part of an asteroid that exploded over Russia in February 2013 as it entered the Earth's atmosphere at 19 km per second (41000mph). An object moving that fast in the atmosphere experiences pressure pushing back many millions of times more than normal, and at an altitude of 30km (97000ft) the asteroid detonated releasing the equivalent of 500 kilotons of TNT. This sample is a few grams of chondrite LL5 meteorite with fusion crust- a small chunk of former asteroid!
These specimens from Pakistan currently available in a wide selection of sizes here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Petrolium Quartz Crystals
Get an inexpensive magnifier with UV LED here:
From Amazon: BUY NOW: 40X Jeweler LED UV Magnifier
Caliper type display stands available here (chrome or brass):
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Caliper Display Stand
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Petroleum Inclusions in Quartz: this doubly terminated (pointy at both ends) clear quartz crystal has small chambers filled with petroleum oil and small bubbles of methane gas- trapped within the crystal since its formation about 100 million years ago. Under ultraviolet light the fluorescent oil emits bright blue and green light showing the presence of the many chambers in the crystal, some quite small. These crystals are mainly found and mined from the Zhob Valley in Pakistan.
Find this cube and other rainbow making creations by this artist here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Niji Cubes
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Niji Cube: a stunning kinetic art object constructed from acrylic and thin layers of plastic diffraction grating. Just add a white light source to produce an explosion of vivid colors with these creations by artist Minato Takeo. Here the rainbow spectrum is produced not by refraction like that of a prism, but instead by diffraction, where light waves deconstructively and constuctively interfere. A wonderful object to place on a sunny windowsill or, as in this video, to cast the beam of a flashlight through in a darkened room.
Get this nice set of regular polyhedra dice here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Polyhedra Dice Set
Less expensive sets of standard plastic dice here:
From Amazon: BUY NOW: Polyhedra Dice Set
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Platonic Solids Dice Set: The five famous convex regular polyhedra in the form of fair dice. This set is cast in metal with clean edges and makes for a great way to own these symmetrical objects that have fascinated thinkers ever since the ancient Greeks wrote about them circa 360 BC. Only these five forms meet these criteria (in 3D space) for each face: must be equal in size, be equal in number of sides, each side of equal length, identical in angle were any two sides meet, and have the same number of sides meet at each vertex point of the solid. 2000 years later the famous mathematician Euler determined that for these 5 shapes V-E+F=2, the number of corners (vertices), minus the number of edges, plus the number of faces, will always equal 2.
Get an infinity cube here (many colors and sizes to choose from):
From Ricardo Churchill (Etsy): BUY NOW: Infinity Cube
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Infinity Cube Sculpture: crafted from solid stainless steel and powder coated orange, the geometry of this mathematical sculpture is the perimeter of the faces of a cube traced by a nonintersecting connection of equal line segments. When viewed from a corner, a cube has a hexagonal cross section, and some may recall the famous logo of Silicon Graphics computers based on such an infinity cube (a design by Scott Kim). Rotating this “tubed cube” along a diagonal axis reveals the interesting symmetries of this geometric construction.
Get this demonstration puzzle here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Aristotle's Wheel
WIkipedia has some details on the Wheel "Paradox"
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Aristotle’s Wheel “Paradox”: How does the smaller attached disk travel the same length as the larger one if both disks only make one full rotation? Note the shorter path of the smaller disk, if rolled on its own. This beautifully made demonstration depicts an issue of geometry and motion that perplexed the best minds of humanity for 2000 years. The ancients knew the formula for circumference, and C=2πR for the large disk is clearly greater than C=2πr for the smaller- so how could the smaller disk, rotated once, still travel the distance of the larger one if attached? The great Galileo even offered a solution to the problem in his book Two New Sciences, where he approximated the situation as concentric hexagons and considered the limit as the number of sides increased. So what is the best answer to make sense of this situation?