RE: [asa] Easy to show experiments

George, I believe that was the Wolfgang Pauli effect.

Moorad

________________________________

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of George Murphy
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 12:03 PM
To: Carol or John Burgeson
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: 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 <mailto:burgytwo@juno.com>

        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 13:42:22 2007