The Department of Physics at MIT pushes back the frontiers of human understanding of space and time and of matter and energy in all its forms, from the subatomic to the cosmological and from the elementary to the complex.
A block of wood is attached vertically between two strings. When the bottom string is pulled slowly, the top string breaks. When the bottom string is pulled quickly, it itself breaks.
MIT-Harvard Center for Ultra-Cold Atoms Kids Day 2012, 2/3: Local youth visit the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultra-Cold Atoms for demos, lab tours, and talks as part of the Cambridge Science Festival. Researchers demonstrate key ideas behind heat anhd cold using liquid nitrogen, balloons, ...
A long beaded chain is looped over a motor pulley. When the motor is turned on, a disturbance in the chain causes waves to propagate through it. When the motor is brought up to full speed and the chain is knocked off the pulley it will maintain its shape for a few seconds and appear to ...
Physicist Walter Lewin shares his personal insights into major works of art from the first quarter of the 20th century.
An interesting feature on the MIT Professor Emeritus of Physics by LaInformacion.com.
Professor of Physics Emeritus Walter Lewin performing his most famous physics demonstrations on the occasion of the publication of his new book, FOR THE LOVE OF PHYSICS: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge Of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders
Two pucks of the same mass are slid at each other on an air table, and their resulting collisions demonstrate conservation of momentum. Notice on the first collision, for example, that when a moving puck hits a stationary puck dead-on, that the second puck leaves with the same velocity as the ...
A Wimshurst electrostatic generator, working on the principle of induction, generates high voltage differences and sparks between two movable electrodes. By increasing the distance between the electrodes, higher potential differences can be built up. Electrostatic induction refers to the ...
Abiy Tasissa teaches "The Wave Equation Under Galilean Transformation." Read more about the Experimental Study Group: http://esg.mit.edu/
Perhaps the universe is not so much strange as brimming with lovely paradox. The search for such beauty seems to lie at the heart of Frank Wilczek's work.
This lecture explains the scientific basis for particle physicists' confidence, both in the discovery potential of the LHC and in its absolute safety.
The Enormous Subatomic Paradox Professor Steve Nahn Accompanying the start of the Large Hadron Collider has been speculation of discoveries treading the line between science and science fiction: mini-black holes, new particles, extra dimensions, mechanisms for how fundamental particles have ...
Two demonstrators sit at either end of a rotating platform and toss a ball back and forth. When viewed from the rest frame (when the camera is mounted to the ground), the ball follow a straight line but doesn't reach its target because during the ball's flight the target rotates away. When ...
A short documentary on the Bose-Einstein Condensate work done in Wolfgang Ketterle's lab.
A light bulb is connected in series with a coil of very fine copper wire and a DC power supply. The voltage is adjusted so that the bulb glows dimly. When the coil is immersed in liquid nitrogen the resistance of the wire decreases causing the current to increase and the bulb to glow ...
A ball is dropped in front of a meter stick and lit by a strobe light. A long exposure photograph captures the position of the ball at each evenly spaced flash of light. The acceleration of the ball can then be measured from the photo. Note that the frame rate of the video capture (30fps) is ...
Five steel balls of different sizes are dropped into corn syrup. The balls reach a constant velocity shortly after entering the fluid. The velocity is constrained due to the drag balancing the force of gravity in the fluid. This demonstrates the relationship between the size of the ball and ...
A mass hangs from two identical springs. First, the springs are attached in series by a short string between them. The springs are also connected in parallel by two peripheral strings that are initially slack. The center string is cut, changing the system from series to parallel. The mass ...
Dr. Arpita Upadhyaya 2002-2005 Pappalardo Fellow
A can of spray paint is attached to a spring oscillator. A roll of paper is run past the oscillating can. The result is a sine wave on the paper.
