The pneumatic tire and the chain drive, followed by the development of gears, revolutionized bicycling in the later 1800s. In the last fifteen years, there has been a revolution of sorts in the ...

A rotating black-and-white disk produces the illusion of color. Rotate this black-and-white pattern at the right speed, and the pattern appears to contain colored rings. You see color because ...

Make a simple mini-motor. A coil of wire becomes an electromagnet when current passes through it. The electromagnet interacts with a permanent magnet, causing the coil to spin. Voilà! You’ve created ...

Create your own personal sound system with a coat hanger and string. Create your own personal sound system with a coat hanger and a string, producing musical sounds that only you can hear Cut two ...

See yourself as others see you in this cylindrical mirror. A flat mirror will always reflect an image that's right side up and reversed right to left. A cylindrical mirror can produce images that are ...

The distribution of the mass of an object determines the position of its center of gravity, its angular momentum, and your ability to balance it. Place a lump of clay about the size of your fist ...

You’ve probably seen an ice skater spinning on the tip of one skate suddenly start to spin dramatically faster. A diver or gymnast may also suddenly flip or twist much faster. This speeded-up rotation ...

Make waves without getting wet. With just a Slinky and your hands, model transverse wave resonances as well as longitudinal wave resonances. Learn about nodes and antinodes of motion and compression.

Polarized light passing through sugar water reveals beautiful colors. White light is made up of all the colors in the rainbow. When polarized white light passes through a sugar solution, each color’s ...

Discover why your favorite cat videos don't leak out of optical fibers. A transparent material, such as glass or water, can actually reflect light better than any mirror. All you have to do is look at ...

Store up an electric charge, then make sparks. Tired of electrostatic experiments that just won’t work? This experiment will produce a spark that you can feel, see, and hear. Rub a foam plate with ...

With polarized light, you can make a stained glass window without glass. Using transparent tape and polarizing material, you can make and project beautifully colored patterns reminiscent of abstract ...