physics

113 Articles

Double Pendulum

Powered Double Pendulum Is A Chaotic Display

February 25, 2015 by 25 Comments

If you’ve never seen a double pendulum before, it’s basically just a pendulum with another pendulum attached to the end. You might not think that’s anything special, but these devices can exhibit extremely chaotic behavior if enough energy is put into the system. The result is often a display that draws attention. [David] wanted to build his own double pendulum display, but he wanted to make it drive itself. The result is a powered double pendulum.

There aren’t many build details here, but the device is simple enough that we can deduce how it works from the demonstration video. It’s broken into two main pieces; the frame and the pendulum. The frame appears to be made mostly from wood. The front plate is made of three layers sandwiched together. A slot is cut out of the middle to allow a rail to slide up and down linearly. The rail is designed in such a way that it fits between the outer layers of the front plate like a track.

The pendulum is attached to the linear rail. The rail moves up and down and puts energy into the pendulum. This causes the pendulum to actually move and generate the chaotic behavior. The rail slides up and down thanks to an electric motor mounted to the base. The mechanics work similar to a piston on a crankshaft. The motor looks as though it is mounted to a wooden bracket that was cut with precision on a laser cutter. The final product works well, though it is a bit noisy. We also wonder if the system would be even more fun to watch if the rotation of the motor had an element of randomness added to it. Or he could always attach a paint sprayer to the end. Continue reading “Powered Double Pendulum Is A Chaotic Display” →

Ball Bearing Motor Rolls For Reasons Unknown

January 29, 2014 by 97 Comments

[RimstarOrg] has brought us an oldie but goodie this week. He’s built a ball bearing motor, a design which has been causing engineers and scientists to squabble for decades. [RimstarOrg] used a microwave oven transformer with a 70 turn primary coil and a single turn secondary coil to create a low voltage, high current AC power supply. Needless to say, there’s a real risk of fire or electrocution with a setup like this, so be careful if you try this one at home. [RimstarOrg] then built the motor itself. He de-greased two ball bearings then installed them on a metal shaft along with a wooden flywheel. The entire assembly was then mounted on a board so the wheel could spin freely. Two copper straps hold the bearings to the board. Finally, the transformer is wired into the copper straps. In this configuration, the current will flow through the outer race of one bearing, through the balls, and into the inner race. The current then passes down the axle and passes through the other bearing. There is very little resistance in this circuit, so it can only be powered on for a few seconds at a time before things start to melt down.

Continue reading “Ball Bearing Motor Rolls For Reasons Unknown” →

Fun With LED Matrix And Mouse

July 15, 2013 by 6 Comments

fun-with-LED-matrix-and-mouse

[Brad] just acquired a 32×32 RGB LED matrix and he jumped right into the deep end with his first project. To try out his skills on the device he used an Arduino to drive a slew of pixels with bouncing-ball physics.

The demo starts off with a hail storm of multi-colored falling pixels. In the center of the storm is the cursor, which he controls with a PS2 mouse. That happens to be a ball mouse which makes sense as we don’t remember having seen any optical mice as of late that weren’t USB. The PS2 protocol is easy to read using a microcontroller; more about that in [Brad’s] project write up.

By holding down the left mouse button he can draw persistent pixels on the screen. The falling balls then interact by bouncing off of the obstacles. The image above shows a frame on three sides of the screen which has trapped the pixels near the bottom. He can also erase pixels, which has the effect of draining the trapped balls like a hole in a bucket of water. Neat!

Bouncing ball physics are fun to experiment with. Here’s one being driven by an analog computer.

Continue reading “Fun With LED Matrix And Mouse” →

Variable Frequency Laser Using Shaken Ball Bearings

September 19, 2012 by 22 Comments

Lasers normally emit only one color, or frequency of light. This is true for laser pointers or the laser diodes in a DVD player. [Kevin] caught wind of state-of-the-art research into making variable wavelength lasers using shaken grains of metal and decided to build his own.

When [Kevin] read a NewScientist blog post on building variable frequency lasers built with shaken metallic grains, he knew he had to build on. He dug up the arxiv article and realized the experimental setup was fairly simple and easily achievable with a bit of home engineering.

[Kevin]’s device works by taking thousands of small ball bearings and putting them in a small vial with Rodamine B laser dye. To vibrate the particles in the dye, [Kevin] mounted his container of dye and bearings on an audio speaker and used a frequency generator to shake the ball bearings.

When a small 30mW green laser shines through the vial of ball bearings and dye, the laser changes color to a very bright yellow. By vibrating the vial at 35 to 45 Hz, [Kevin] can change the frequency, or color of the laser.

[Kevin] can only alter the frequency of the laser by about 30 nm, or about the same color change as a reddish-orange and an orangish-yellow. Still, it’s pretty amazing that [Kevin] was able to do state-of-the-art physics research at home.

Sadly, we couldn’t find any videos of [Kevin]’s variable frequency laser. If you can find one send it in to the tip line and we’ll update this post.

Flying Batman Is A Load Of Bull

July 12, 2012 by 36 Comments

Batman’s ability to fly is a falsehood. Or at least so says science. We didn’t know science was into disproving super-hero movies (that’s a deep well to drink from) but to each his own. But back in December the Journal of Physics Special Topics took on the subject with their scholarly paper entitled Trajectory of a Falling Batman. The equations presented in the two-page white paper may be above your head, but the concepts are not.

It’s not that Batman can’t fly in the way explained in the film. It’s that he can’t land without great bodily harm. By analyzing the cape in this frame of the film, researchers used Batman’s body height to establish wing span and area. The numbers aren’t good. Top speed will reach about 110 km/h with a sustained velocity of 80 km/h. That’s 80 mph at top speed and just under 50 mph when he comes in for a landing.

Oh Batman, how you’ve let us all down. If you liked this paper, you should dig through the archives. We always wondered if [Bruce Willis] could have actually saved the world from an asteroid.

[via Dvice]

Building A Ranque-Hilsch Vortex Cooling Tube

May 17, 2012 by 44 Comments

The Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube is an interesting piece of equipment. It can, without any moving parts or chemicals, separate hot and cold compressed gasses that are passed through it. Interestingly enough, you can cobble one together with very few parts for fairly cheap. [Otto Belden] tossed one together in a weekend back in 2009 just to see if he could do it. His results were fairly good and he shared some video tutorials on its construction.

His latest version, which you can see in the video below, takes compressed air at about 78degrees and spits out about 112degrees on the hot side and  8degrees on the cold side. Not too bad!

Continue reading “Building A Ranque-Hilsch Vortex Cooling Tube” →