Innovative Uses of Vernier Technology

Lots of physics instructors use photogates, but did you know that you can use other sensors at the same time as photogates? For example, you can use a force sensor along with a photogate. You can use this sensor combination in the standard momentum impulse experiment where one measures the velocity of a dynamics cart…

Subjects: Physics

How would you make a derivative machine? Here’s an unexpected way: Faraday’s law states that there is an induced emf in a coil, proportional to the time rate of change of the magnetic flux Φ through that coil, or where N is the number of turns in the coil. You can do this experiment with…

Subjects: Physics

Use our award-winning Logger Pro software to create sample movies for teaching chemistry. This is an excellent opportunity to use video analysis to sync a video of the experiment with real-time graphing of the data. For example, video analysis can be a valuable instructional tool for teaching students how to identify the melting temperature of organic solids…

Subjects: Chemistry

John Melville, our Biology Staff Scientist, has developed a laboratory exercise that investigates proteins using our SpectroVis Plus spectrophotometer or our Colorimeter. This is an excellent exercise that contains several extensions that are appropriate for college courses. This laboratory experiment is designed to introduce the student to the study of macromolecules. The Bradford assay is used to…

Subjects: Biology

There is a Universal Truth ™ related to teaching geoscience: there will always be a current event to point to. We live on a dynamic planet. Things move – sometimes undesirably. Japan is suffering from one of the strongest earthquakes in recorded history. Added to this are the compounded damages from the tsunami and the…

Subjects: Environmental Science

Using the New High Current Sensor and the 30-Volt Voltage Probe Two of our newest sensors, the High Current Sensor and the 30-Volt Voltage Probe, are well suited for exploring solar panels. During some of our early prototyping, we thought it would be nice to take some data with accompanying video. The result is a very interesting Logger Pro project:…

Subjects: Environmental Science

John Melville, our Biology Staff Scientist, has developed an innovative way to demonstrate how the electrical and physical events of the cardiac cycle are related using a Blood Pressure Sensor (BPS-BTA $105) and an EKG Sensor (EKG-BTA $147) with our award-winning Logger Pro software. EKG with Blood Pressure Pulse Blood pressure is a measure of the changing fluid pressure within the…

Subjects: Human Physiology

We’ve all heard of the age-old Bennet-Clark/Rothschild debate about flea jumping, right? Just to refresh your memory, Henry Bennet-Clark, the researcher who discovered in 1967 that fleas store the elastic potential energy for their jump in a material called resilin, made predictions on the mechanics of flea jumping. Bennet-Clark hypothesized that fleas take to the…

Subjects: Biology

An interesting and challenging problem for AP Chemistry students is the investigation of a mixture. We offer a chemistry experiment in which the student analyzes a mixture of hydrochloric acid, HCl, and phosphoric acid, H3PO4. The student is presented with the task of conducting a seemingly routine acid-base titration. However, the student must analyze the…

Subjects: Chemistry

An Improvement to the Inverse Square Law Light Experiment Richard Borne (Northern Illinois University) has suggested an improvement to the Inverse Square Law Light Experiment using our  (order code OEK). He noticed that the intensity of our white LED lamp decreases somewhat over time when it is first turned on. Since students doing this experiment may take…

Subjects: Physics