CineSpinner Hula Santa
CineSpinner animation kinetic art availabe here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: CineSpinner Santa
From Etsy: BUY NOW: CineSpinner (many animations)
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CineSpinner Hula Santa: ole St. Nick showing off his hooping skills in this barrier-grid type animation using Moiré pattern effects of constructive and deconstructive interference. One of many CineSpinner type kinetic animation loops by Scanimation creator, artist, and author Rufus Butler Seder.
Glass Spirals Kinetic Ornament
Sometime available from these sources:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Glass Spiral Ornaments
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Glass Spirals Kinetic Ornament: a thread of glass is shaped into connected helixes in this holiday decoration- one clockwise the other counterclockwise. When spinning the rotational motion creates translational motion both upwards and downwards along the vertical direction. Mesmerizing holiday decor!
Sphere Sticks Geometric Puzzle
Get this affordable and amazing puzzle here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Sphere Sticks
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Sphere Sticks Puzzle: 30 identical wood pieces, each with two notches as shown, can create 12 interlocking pentagons in a perfect symmetry- look carefully and you can see that each rod is in an identical configuration with the 4 others that connect with it. Precision cut notches on the rods allow them to interlock with elastic tension such that vector sum of the 4 forces sum to zero in this tensegrity type equilibrium. The dodecahedron, with its 30 edges and 12 sides, is the basis of this puzzle sculpture.
Tensegrity for the Desk
Get similar tensegrity sculptures here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Tensegrity Sculpture
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Tensegrity for the Desk: an elegant, and stackable, desk toy version of this popular tensegrity configuration by maker/designer Micah Murdoch. Constructed from poplar wood, the design assembles easily with clever ball and socket connectors at the ends of the nylon support lines (3 long, 1 short). Stacking them seems to only increase the illusion of floating with the subtle way these structures defy gravity. Another fun configuration of tensegrity concept, invented by Kenneth Snelson and made famous by the architect Buckminster Fuller in 1949.
Fulgurite
It's now possible to obtain a fulgurite sample at a resonable price. Many sellers on Etsy offer a wide selection of specimens:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Fulgurite Frozen Lightning
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Fulgurite: glass formation from when lightning strikes sand. One of only four ways to produce natural glass- volcanos, earthquakes (pseudotachylite from fault zones), meteor impacts (tektites and impactites), and lightning strikes (fulgurites). This fulgurite tube was collected from the Egyptian Saharan desert.
3-Shuttle Trammel of Archimedes
This device came in my Curiosity Box subscrition. A great way to start collecting your own physics toys (and other brain food):
From the Vsauce team: BUY NOW: The Curiosity Box (New box will ship soon- get a great deal now)
Get similar (two shuttle) devices here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW
Trammel of Archimedes
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3-Shuttle Trammel of Archimedes: as the shuttles take turns completing their straight line journeys, the end of the crank arm traces an ellipse. This precision 3-shuttle version by the VSauce team came in my @thecuriositybox - made with high quality molded plastic parts that produce very smooth movement- a wonderful addition to my collection! Sometimes sold as a “do nothing machine” or “nothing grinder”, far from doing nothing this simple and crucially important mechanism demonstrates how rotational motion can be converted into translational oscillatory motion- such as how a piston can drive an engine’s crankshaft.
Satisfying Hexagons
Get this 3D print here (your choice of colors):
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Satifying Hexagons
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Satisfying Hexagons: this delightful kinetic art manipulation toy features 19 nested hexagons within a hexagonal frame. Embedded magnets allows one to move the central hexagon from behind creating interesting visual effects. A 3D print created by @i.am.the.lazy.engineer- indeed oddly satisfying!
Tensegrity Table
Get this 3D printed/hand painted tensegrity art here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: LUNA Tensegrity Display Table
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Tensegrity Table: A wonderful three string version of the suspension equilibrium table. The LUNA tensegrity stand is 3D printed and then painted by hand, with designer Anthony Yap incorporating a celestial moon phase motif to nice effect, and clear nylon fishing line for an almost invisible means of support. Another configuration related to the concept of tensegrity invented by Kenneth Snelson and made famous by the architect Buckminster Fuller in 1949.
Scutoids
This set of 3D printed scutoids available here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Scutoid container set
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Scutoids: a recently recognized form of geometric solids discovered in 2018. Scutoids have a different polygon on each end, and when packed together maximize stability and minimize energy when forming a boundary layer- such as the membranes around organs in living tissue. These 5-6 scutoids have pentagons on one end and hexagons on the other. Discovered by a collaboration of biologists and mathematicians in 2018, this set is sold by Recep Mutlu of 3DPrintBase.
Chorus Line Kaleidoscope
This type of kaleidoscope is hard to find and mostly made by artists. Here are two examples currently avaliable:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Chorus Line Kaleidoscope
From KaleidoscopeShop.com: BUY NOW: Chorus Line Kaleidoscope
Click here for affordable, precision made scopes with angled mirrors: Kaleidoscope Symmetries Explored
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Chorus Line Kaleidoscope: an interesting and uncommon kaleidoscope design where two mirrors are placed with surfaces parallel to each other- resulting in a side by side strip of alternating images. Here the camera is attached to the view port and the entire tube is rotated to produce the changing patterns. The kaleidoscope was invented by the famous Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), and has become an entire field of artistic endeavor.
Phase Locking Folk Toy v2.0
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 original version here: Phase Locking Folk Toy
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 v2.0: the “double whimmy-diddle” with two propellers (an advanced design from Tennessee- according to the printing in the package!). Interestingly, with each start up, the propellers will sometimes spin in the same direction, and other times in opposite directions. Another vintage toy from the 1970s, available for many years from the Mountain Craft Shop out of Wetzel County West Virginia.
Cone of Apollonius
Similar models available here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Cone of Apollonius
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Cone of Apollonius: Slicing a cone with a plane will produce the famous curves known as the conic sections, as demonstrated with this beautiful vintage wood model by Nasco. Slicing at a right angle to the cone’s axis of symmetry produces a circle, and tilting the intersecting plane a bit produces an ellipse. When the plane is tilted parallel to the side of the cone the curve produced is a parabola, and tilting even further creates a hyperbola. The discovery of the mathematics demonstrated here are attributed to Apollonius of Perga from about 250 BC- thousands of years later Kepler, Newton, and others showed these conic sections to be intricately connected to many branches of physics such as planetary orbits and the optics of telescopes.
1790 Terrestrial Globe by Mova
Available for all the planets and several versions of Earth:
From Amazon: BUY NOW
Mova Globes: all types
From Amazon: BUY NOW
Mova Globes: 1790 Terrestrial
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Octopus Stand available here:
From Etsy-pyrofarms: BUY NOW OctoStand in Metal
1790 Terrestrial Globe by Mova: rotating counterweighted globe sealed within a clear liquid filled acrylic sphere. The rotation in a Mova globe is powered by light that shines through the semi-transparent map image on to solar cells within the globe which drive a motor. But what does the motor push against to maintain the rotation? Believe it or not it uses magnets to push against the Earth's magnetic field like a compass needle. Wonderful physics of all kinds in the design of this clever device. The featured map is a faithful recreation of a globe famous for its accuracy at the time by Giovanni María Cassini and highlights the voyages of James Cook.
Impossible Nail
Nice versions are curretnly available from Etsy:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Impossible Nail
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Impossible Nail: An eighteen-penny nail driven through the inner notches of a solid piece of wood. The wood was notched and the nail added- no glue used or cuts made, and the nail is solid and in one piece. Not impossible, but creating this does depend on the use of some amazing physical properties of wood. I won’t reveal the method here but a quick search on YouTube produces a few how-to videos showing the process.
Balance Stacking Sculpture
Another wonderful desing by BinDesign- get one here in black or natural wood:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Bin Design Balancer Puzzle
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Balance Stacking Sculpture: a series of torques in unstable equilibrium complete this Calder-esque structure. As each component is added its weighted end balances all the others before it, with the initial small piece weighing about a gram or so. Remove the end piece and the whole structure comes down. Another wonderful design by artist Bin Xu.
Lampe Kino: Polarizing Art
The amazing art of Anne-Lise King available here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Kino Lamp Polarizing Art Lights
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Lampe Kino: Art from from the manipulation of polarized light. These videos showcase two designs by artist Anne-Lise King, and each design can itself be displayed in numerous ways depending on the orientation of the polarizing filter and the layering of plastic imaging sheets. Light has an orientation, denoted as polarization, and a polarizing filter can be used to block certain orientations. The colors produced here come from how the molecular structure of plastics can rotate the polarization of light that passes through- light corresponding to yellows and greens gets rotated in plastic in proportion to their frequency, red and blue frequencies only a small amount. The images here are constructed with different layers of plastic to rotate the light by differing amounts. Polarizing filters are then added to allow only certain frequencies (colors) of light through.
Sphere and other Orbiforms
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Sphere and other Orbiforms: pi day special post- volumes of constant width made from solid brass. These shapes have constant diameter no matter their orientation and will roll like spheres between two planes- note how the acrylic plate stays parallel to the table as the sphere and other orbiforms roll underneath. The first orbiform is based on the Reuleaux triangle and the second on a Reuleaux pentagon. Fun pi fact- the perimeter of any shape of constant width is alway equal to the diameter(width) multiplied by pi: P=πd.
Sun Sculpture: Magnetic Field Lines of the Solar Corona
This wonderful 3D rendering of the Sun available here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: Sun Sculpture
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Solar Sculpture: the paths of 5000 magnetic field lines etched into optical quality glass map the complex flow of plasma in the Sun’s outermost atmosphere replicating how the solar corona appeared on Oct 21, 2000. This sculpture is based on a sophisticated computer model from a group of research scientists at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, and the rendering contains 300,000 etched points to create the image. A map of our wonderful and complex star that can be held in the palm of your hand.