Fantastic Dan Thank for sharing

Perfect pace and delivery.

Thanks for the video, im not a physics specialist. Since you mentioned you used it when teaching year 12’s and 13’s, I will never teach a level physics. Is there a use for it somewhere in the gcse specification?

Hi Priya you could use it to describe things like how like charges repel as the ball picks up charge and is repelled from the strip. Also concepts like earthing as the ball deposits tjhat charge on the next strip

thanks, that’s realy useful.

 

Splendid, Dan, thanks for sharing. Now to find time to make one.

I think OCR at GCSE has some particle physics in it?

Chinese wispers in my department led my boss to believe I was using thousands of volts to accelerate steel ball bearings at incredible velocities around the lab. He was very happy when he saw what it was and also like that fact that it was a particle accelerator

An older GCSE question was based on Franklins bells

 

 

This is great for the discharhing charging idea (This was an old AQA question)

i m not sure how to find graphite 33 but i should do it in my classroom! thanks for your sharing! 

get it from here:

• Graphite spray e.g. http://www.rapidonline.com/Design-Technology/Kontakt-Chemie-Graphit-33-S…
•  its not expensive

As Dan says the graphite spray is easy to purchase and is less messy that the stuff I am about to describe.

You school may have a substance called aquadag on the shelf. It is a colloidal suspension of carbon used to paint things to use with the Van de Graaff amongst other things

It is messy compared to Dan’s spray and takes longer to dry

It will paint ok on polystyrene or pith balls. To get table tennis balls to work (in the picture) you need to rough them up with sand paper

Here is Franklins bells in action with my Wimshurst generator

I’ve just come back from an event called Schools Physicists of the Year at Durham University.  The second year UG students have been working in groups to develop physics applications and ideas.  One project was on accelerators like these.  There was a very simple one for which worked well.

I thought I’d attached the photo but appaently not.  i’ll send it to David and let hime post it!

Ruth

Please do Ruth

Please do Ruth

Hi Ruth thanks for sending me the file

They were using a VDG and had more problems with getting that to work  than with the accelerator themselves.  

I used a pencil to put graphite on a ping pong ball, less messy and equally effective.

[Author]

Posts