Calculations are presented showing that the usual 'faster than g' demonstration has a surprising property. That is, a rod hinged at its bottom end rotates at an exponentially increasing rate until it falls with maximum vertical acceleration, unlike an object that falls freely by gravity alone. If the rod is hinged at its top end and released from…

A solid ball placed on a rotating turntable is known to roll slowly around a circular path, at a speed 3.5 times slower than the turnable itself. If the ball is located in a straight track across a diameter of the turntable, then it accelerates rapidly to the edge. Both effects were filmed in slow motion using a video camera and a cake decoration…

We discuss the limits of the equation of the period of a simple pendulum, T[subscript s] = 2[pi][square root]l/g, frequently used in high-school and university classrooms to measure the acceleration of gravity. We evaluate the relative error in determining the acceleration of gravity with this simple equation instead of a more realistic one,…

We introduce the basics of the Monte Carlo method that allows computing areas and definite integrals, by means of the generation of long sequences of random numbers. The areas of some nontrivial shapes are computed, showing the convergence towards their exact values. The application of the method to the computation of definite integrals is also…

The present article demonstrates a way of programming using an Excel spreadsheet to teach Fourier series expansion in school/colleges without the knowledge of any typical programming language. By using this, a student learns to approximate partial sum of the n terms of Fourier series for some periodic signals such as square wave, saw tooth wave,…

The position of a ball was measured by using the touchscreen of a mobile phone during its rolling motion. The translational speed of the ball was determined using the recorded position and time data. The speed was also calculated by a conventional method. The speed values determined by the two methods were consistent, thus it was proven that a…

This study aims to demonstrate how the average speed of a light-emitting toy car may be determined using a smartphone's light sensor. The freely available Android smartphone application, "AndroSensor," was used for the experiment. The classroom experiment combines complementary physics knowledge of optics and kinematics to find the…

A Cartesian diver can be used to measure the surface tension of a liquid to a certain extent. The surface tension measurement is related to the two critical pressures at which the diver is about to sink and about to emerge. After sinking because of increasing pressure, the diver is repulsed to the centre of the vessel. After the pressure is…

If we drop a magnet through a coil, an emf is induced in the coil according to Faraday's law of electromagnetic induction. Here, such an experiment is done using expEYES kit. The plot of emf versus time has a specific shape with two peaks. A theoretical analysis of this graph is discussed here for both short and long cylindrical magnets.…

What follows is a description of a theoretical model designed to calculate the playing frequencies of the musical pitches produced by a trombone. The model is based on quantitative treatments that demonstrate the effects of the flaring bell and cup-shaped mouthpiece sections on these frequencies and can be used to calculate frequencies that…

This paper describes a simple activity for plotting and characterizing the light curve from an exoplanet transit event by way of differential photometry analysis. Using free digital imaging software, participants analyse a series of telescope images with the goal of calculating various exoplanet parameters, including size, orbital radius and…

Recently, with the development of more powerful and accurate computational tools, the inclusion of new didactic materials in the classroom is known to have increased. However, the form in which these materials can be used to enhance the learning process is still under debate. Many different methodologies have been suggested for constructing new…

Proton beams have been colliding at 7 TeV in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) since 30 March 2010, meaning that the LHC research programme is underway. Particle physicists around the world are looking forward to using the data from these collisions, as the LHC is running at an energy three and a half times higher than previously achieved at any…

Multi-ball collisions inside the Astroblaster toy are explained from the conservation of momentum point of view. The important role of the coefficient of restitution is demonstrated in ideal and real cases. Real experimental results with the simple toy can be compared with a computer model represented by an interactive Java applet. (Contains 1…

The bicycle provides a context-rich problem accessible to students in a first-year physics course, encircling several core physics principles such as conservation of total energy and angular momentum, dissipative forces, and vectors. In this article, I develop a simple numerical model that can be used by any first-year physics student to…