I need your help teaching physics

[blechman]

I will be on vacation until next tuesday. My dad wants to run the Pheonix marathon. It will be a good time to catch up on my P. A. M. Dirac and to do homework.

you sure do have a fascinating choice of bedtime reading, I must say! There are parts of that book that I *STILL* don't understand, and I've been studying the subject for years!

But anyway, once again, good luck on your presentation. I'm sure you'll do fine. Have fun!

 

[ΔxΔp≥ћ/2]

I'm back!

Let's see if one can really make a long story short:

Phoenix > Home
Phoenix: great drivers, great weather, holy moly that fashion park is huge, Grand Canyon is a hole in the ground
Snow storm @ home, slept in an airport
Came home

I got a response from Markos Hankin. He is among other things a demo guru at MIT. He told me to get a laser pointer because the light has to be highly directional and of single wavelenght. He also told me to attach single edged razor blades to the wrench. I hope that I will be able to get the stuff and try it out tomorrow.

Neither of your hypotheses works I'm afraid. Diffraction works best when the size of your slit is comparable to the wavelength of your light (and here we're talking a few hundred nanometers). So a long wavelength and a narrow slit should actually help! The only reason you see red light used in these experiments so often is because that's the kind of laser it's cheapest to make.

I'll try to make my laser violet then.

I probably will not go to school tomorrow, I have too much homework to sort out. I also have tests and presentations to prepare for.

 

[belliott4488]

I'll try to make my laser violet then.

I probably will not go to school tomorrow, I have too much homework to sort out. I also have tests and presentations to prepare for.

You can get a violet laser? I've never even heard of one, let alone seen one! Sounds very cool if it does exist, though.

If you're doing diffraction, keep in mind what others have said: the wavelengths for visible light are on the order of thousandths of a millimeter, so the way one usually demonstrates diffraction is with a diffraction grating, i.e. a mirror with precisely engraved grooves in it.

 

[LongOne]

Suggest a demonstration of the Casimir effect.