Physics Project Ideas?

Question

For my high school physics class we are required to do an "A" project per quarter to recieve an A in the class. I would really like to do something with food. I saw somewhere that you could make a jello cake for a cell, that is a great idea for biology. However, I don't think that will work for physics. Any ideas. If I can't do food, I am interested in doing a video, but I am unsure of the topic I could use. the title of the class is Physics-Mechanics. I haven't learned much yet, and I have a feeling I will have to be teaching myself the basic ideas of this. Please help me.

I found a really neat idea. My friend and I are going to create a simple hovercraft. thank you so much for your ideas, but I have a feeling they are going to be too difficult for us to do.

Answer 1

I am a physicist that has done research in food physics. The physics of food is built up from the interactions and dynamics of molecules. In most cases the molecules are biopolymers. The mechanics that you are studying now with masses and forces will later be used to model molecules if you go further. I should warn you that most food systems are not in thermodynamic equilibrium, so the results of an experiment will depend upon the thermal history. If you are not careful about this your results will not be reproducible and very difficult to interpret. Some possible experiments are:
1. a gel is a random network of crystaline junction zones that extends from one end of container to the other. There is a simple test for the melting point of a gel called the ball bearing test. A ball bearing is placed on top of the gel and the gel is slowly heated. The melting point is that temperature at which the ball bearing drops through the surface of the gel. You can study gelatin as a function of concentration and thermal history (see note above).
2. Polymers have a visco - elastic response that depends upon the speed of deformation. If you deform bread dough slowly, little force is needed because the long stingy molecules have time to snake past one another (reptation). However if the same dough is deformed rapidly, more force is needed because molecular bonds are broken. You could demonstate this measuring the force required for a given deformation as a function of rate. A rheometer would be very useful for this experiment.
3. Measure the coefficient of restitution for seeds (corn, wheat, barley, peas, etc) bouncing off a surface. This result has application for machine vision inspection sytems. If you do this I would like to see your report because I am currently working on the optics for such a system.
If you would like further advice, you can email me at [e-mail]
Good luck with your project.

Answer 2

What if you made a large coil. Attach say a light bulb. Then take the magnetron out of a microwave and build a gun using PVC (plastic pipe) See if you can tune it so that the electromagnetic waves will stimulate enough current in the coil to light the bulb. The magnetron in a 1500 watt microwave is strong enough to do it. That would constitute a transfer of power through space requiring no conductive media. You could probably get a prize for that. You would have to focus primarily on wavelength to determine the length of the coil and whew I don't even know where to start on the number of windings of copper wire but, It is very do-able.

You could build a weak rail gun that shoots paperclips out of a starter solenoid.

You could crack water and demonstrate the power and cleanliness of hydrogen gas. It makes a very powerfull statement when people realize that the result of the combustion of hydrogen is, in fact, clean pure water.

Answer 3

If you have a laser pointer and a mirror you could take a picture of the laser light being reflected at the same angle it hits the mirror. Use some smoke to make the ray visible (you could ask somebody who smokes cigarettes to blow the smoke towards the mirror). Another thing you could do is electrify a balloon or a plastic tube by rubbing it against some cloth or your hair and then hold it close to a thin string of water coming out the sink. The water will bend towards the balloon/tube. You can take a photo of that. If you have a magnifying glass you could point it at something that's a bit further away. The glass will flip everything upside down. ...or use it to concentrate sun rays onto paper to make it burn. Something very simple is to take a photo of two persons about the same weight sitting on a see-saw holding the balance. Hope this helps. Good Luck!

Answer 4

Get 2 mouses, feed one high carbs and the other meat. Demonstrate how the energy of food works in differerent carbon based life.

Answer 5

make a superconductor with liquid N2 and high power magnet

Answer 6

use round eggs or cookies or even brownies as atoms, or you can color easter eggs for proton neuton and electron, good luck