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Physics

We recently updated the experiment files that support our physics-related curricular material. All of the following are now available in the "downloads" section of our web site (www.vernier.com). If you do not have internet access, contact us and we will send the files on disk.

RealTime Physics
New versions of RealTime Physics-Motion and Force and RealTime Physics-Heat and Temperature are now available from John Wiley Publishing. We have updated our experiment files to match these new volumes. The files can be found on our web site in all the following formats: Logger Pro for Windows, Logger Pro for Macintosh, Data Logger/MacMotion/MacTemp for Macintosh, Data Logger/Motion/Temperature for MS-DOS.

Physics with Computers
(experiment files for older computers and MPLI for Windows)
Our new Physics with Computers book was written assuming that you are using Logger Pro software. If you have older computers that cannot run Logger Pro, we can make it easier for you to do these labs. We now have the experiment files for each of the experiments set up to be run using a ULI on older Macs and MS-DOS versions of our programs (Data Logger, MacMotion/Motion, Sound, etc). We also have files for use with MPLI for Windows for everything except the photogate experiments.

Demonstration Ideas
The October 1998 issue of The Physics Teacher has a good demonstration of coupled oscillations. The article is by Charles A. Sawicki (North Dakota State University). He uses our Magnetic Field Sensor to study a pendulum made of two small disk refrigerator magnets. If you set things up just right, energy is transferred between the torsional motion of the magnets and the pendulum motion. Very small motions of the magnet are involved.

At the Two-Year College Physics MBL II workshop at Forsyth Technical Community College, Winston-Salem, NC there was a nice demonstration of mutual induction using our Current & Voltage Probe System. Connect a large solenoid to a battery with one current probe and a switch in series. Connect a second solenoid to the other current probe and nothing else. Start data collection and you can nicely show the induced current in the second solenoid each time you close or open the switch. Thanks to Roger King (Southwestern Michigan College), Ntungwa Maasha (Coastal Georgia CC), and Dennis Richman (Waukesha County Technical College) for the idea.

Project PHYSLab ’99
Project PHYSLab will again be held at three sites next summer:

• Omaha, NE: June 21-July 9
• Palo Alto, CA: June 28-July 16
• Portland, OR: July 5-July 23

Gordon Hoffman, a physicist from Portland, OR, took a trip across the Pacific Ocean on a container ship. He had with him a ULI and a 3-Axis Accelerometer (order code 3D-DIN). Here are some acceleration data during the worst storm on this unstabilized ship. It shows the net acceleration (magnitude of the vector sum of the three accelerations). For comparison, when we have taken measurements on a stabilized cruise ship, the maximum acceleration is typically about 0.6 m/s2. On this voyage, the accelerations were 2 m/s2.