Re: [asa] Easy to show experiments

Burgy -

Are you familiar with the Heisenberg Effect? It's the ability of some theoretical physicists to break laboratory equipment without touching it. It was said that when Heisenberg walked into a lab, the glassware jumped off the shelves and shattered on the floor. I'm not nearly that good - I have to touch stuff to break it. But don't judge the do-ability of an experiment by my success with it.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Carol or John Burgeson
  To: gmurphy@raex.com
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 11:19 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Easy to show experiments

  George posted: "In One Two Three ... Infinity, pp.121-123, George Gamow describes a experiment which shows (& allows you to calculate) the minimum thickness of an oil film & thus implies the existence of a minimum size of oil particles - molecules, of course, not "atoms" in modern terminology. Briefly, get a pan of water completely level, stretch a straight wire over it in contact with the surface & let a drop of oil spread out on one side of the wire. Then slowly move the wire, spreading out the oil, till the oil film breaks. You can see when this happens by the change in reflected light intensity where the film has broken. (The intensity from the oily part is less because of the change in phase of the light at the oil-air interface relative to that reflected at the lower surface of the oil film.)

  It sounds simple in theory but I tried it once with no success. A cubic mm would cover about a square meter & you'd would need a precisely level surface & straight wire over a distance on the order of a meter. OTOH I'm no experimentalist."

  That would probably be an OK way, but since you could not make it happen, I'm skeptical of using it. Too much apparatus.

  From another source it was suggested that a water glass 1/2 full of water and another water glass 1/2 full of sugar be prepared. When the sugar is poured into the water the resulting mixture is not a full cup.

  But since the sugar grains are not a tight fit, this does not seem to do it either.

  Burgy

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Wed Sep 12 12:04:52 2007