So, our physics teacher has the strange idea of motivating his students by letting each of us present a physical phenomenal we find interesting to our classmates in a 5-minutes-presentation. And now I need something that is interesting for everyone - even people that usually don't care for physics -, but has interesting facts for someone who's interested in it, too (preferably with an easy experiment). You don't happen to have any ideas, do you?
First of all, your professor is awesome for taking the time to do this. Of the top of my mind, the best one I have is Chladni figures.
Basically take a flat metal plate, fix it at the center and spray some fine sand particles on it.
Using a violin bow, gently excite any edge of the plate to magically witness these beautiful normal mode patterns ( known as Chladni patterns/figures ) forming on the plate.
Also notice that by pinching the plate at different points, the pattern obtained changes.
There is a whole lot of physics that goes behind such a simple phenomenon and I dare say we understand it completely. There are lots of questions on these figures that we have no answer for!
Hope this helps with your presentation. Have a good one!
Gif source video: Steve Mould
Venn diagram of shared/unshared letters between Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets: via @juliagalef at Twitter
“Magic happens at Las Pozas. Just like in work by Salvador Dalí, at Las Pozas art portrays one thing as another, invents a reality put in place of conventional, official, socially acceptable reality. More than painting a picture or sculpting an object, they produced an atmosphere, a privileged place.” ~ Irene Herner
Nestled in the thick jungles of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, Edward James discovered the perfect setting for staging his life’s masterpiece. A surrealist labyrinth unfolds amid waterfalls and ponds—natural and man-made—that prepare the mind for immersion into a dream world. With buildings that evoke nonsense, doors leading nowhere, stairways to the sky and concrete flowers that sprout beside real ones, one man’s dreams are realized and reality is displaced by fantasy.
Images via text via
So apparently last year the National Park Service in the US dropped an over 1200 page study of LGBTQ American History as part of their Who We Are program which includes studies on African-American history, Latino history, and Indigenous history.
Like. This is awesome. But also it feels very surreal that maybe one of the most comprehensive examinations of LGBTQ history in America (it covers sports! art! race! historical sites! health! cities!) was just casually done by the parks service.