Here, a relatively simple laboratory experiment of a physical pendulum, suitable for students of science and engineering in the first courses of university physics, is presented to illustrate its dynamic behavior and to determine its inertia moment. To this end, a long wooden rod of length L = 99.8 cm and cross-section radius R = 1.73 cm was used…

We have investigated the motion of water flow through glass tubes of different shapes by calculating the value of the Reynolds number denoted as Re. We know that at a given flow rate the value of Re determines the type of flow being classified as laminar, transitional or tubulent. The dependence of Re in different configurations of glass tubes as…

The article introduces a low-cost Arduino sensor into the Young's modulus determination laboratory for physics university students. A stainless steel ruler is used as a cantilever beam. Its free end attached a mass is slightly bent and released to make it oscillate as a simple harmonic motion. The Arduino sensor detects the moving mass's frequency…

We designed and tested a 3D motion tracking system which displays acquired and derived data using augmented reality. This setup, based on a virtual reality headset and its controllers, is a relatively low-cost, high-precision, six degrees of freedom, high-speed, multiple-objects tracking device. This apparatus proves to be a very high-quality…

The pendulum was an important scientific instrument in the 17th century. It became a typical textbook problem in the 18th century. After the introduction of vectors in physics in the 1890s, the pendulum problem started to be progressively solved in the manner we know nowadays from introductory mechanics courses. Starting from "F = ma"…

In general, undergraduate experimental physics laboratories do not usually have experiments designed to address rolling friction and to measure the value of the rolling friction coefficient. This work explores an experiment, which has the potential to arouse students' curiosity about rolling friction by addressing a counterintuitive aspect of the…

The dynamic study of pendulum systems is considered an indispensable subject for physics and mechanics students in colleges and high schools. In this paper, a detailed methodology is given concerning the use of smartphones in pedagogical practical work for studying the dynamics of pendulum systems. Whereas, three aspects have been discussed…

We describe an educational activity that can be done by using smartphones to collect data in physics experiments aimed to measure the oscillating period of a spring-mass system and the elastic constant of the helicoidal spring by the dynamic method. Results for the oscillating period and for the elastic constant of the spring agree very well with…

In the field of physics teaching, the simple pendulum provides a very simple way to study the harmonic oscillator, the source of some fundamental concepts such as periodicity, relaxation time and anharmonicity. As such, its experimental study is frequently integrated into high school or first year university programs. With this in mind, in this…

In this paper, we propose a simple experimental apparatus that can measure the force variation over time to study the impulse-momentum theorem. In this proposal, a body attached to a rubber string falls freely from rest until it stretches and changes the linear momentum. During that process the force due to the tension on the rubber string is…

In hydrostatics, pressure measurement with U-gauges and their relationship to density is a well-known experiment. Very little is studied or experimented with the dynamics of the movement of a liquid in a U-tube probably due to its theoretical complexity but, after all, it is a simple damped oscillating system. In this paper we present a relatively…

First order processes are of paramount importance for chemical kinetics. In a well-established demonstration experiment, the flow of water out of a vertical glass tube through a capillary simulates a chemical first order process. Here, a digital version of this experiment for lecture hall demonstrations is presented. To this end, water flowing out…

This article is about the development of an Internet-based remotely-controlled physical experiment, this is a part of the Remotely Controlled Laboratory at the University of Applied Sciences of Cologne known as TH Köln. The main experimental set-up is based on Pohl's Torsion Pendulum which was enhanced by a PXI measurement system and a webcam. In…

This paper presents a set of laboratory classes to be taught as a part of a 1 year calculus-based physics class. It is composed of 7 modules designed to bring together experiments and computer simulations. Each module uses both simulations and experiments to address a phenomenon under study, and lasts for 3 weeks (21 weeks total for the whole…

Laboratories studying the anisotropic rotational diffusion of bromobenzene using nuclear spin relaxation and molecular dynamics simulations are described. For many undergraduates, visualizing molecular motion is challenging. Undergraduates rarely encounter laboratories that directly assess molecular motion, and so the concept remains an…