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so I've gone over to the zoo >> So, Professor Sprott has asked me to find someone to entertain you before he arrives,
and I found a great storyteller to come out. Please welcome Reid Miller.
( applause )
>> Hi, Peter. Thank you very much. Hello, everyone.
Welcome to "The Wonders of Physics" this year.
As you may have heard, this year, "Wonders of Physics"
is connected to the Year of the Arts here at the university.
So if you think about it for a second, scientists,
like a physicist, has to think
So, science and the arts creatively like an artist does. And an artist has to know how things work to make art.
are blended. I brought along my friend Quackers, because I've been
telling a lot of duck stories lately. Will you say hi, Quackers?
One day, a duck waddled into a physics lab, walked over to the scientist >> Hi, Quackers.
"You got any duck food?" and said,
This is a physics lab. The scientist looked down and said, "No, I don't have any duck food!
I'm doing experiments. I don't have time to waste on you.
Get out of here!" So the duck left. The next day, the duck waddled
walked over to the scientist back into the physics lab,
and said, "You got any duck food?" The scientist said,
"It's you again?
I told you yesterday, I don't have time for your nonsense. I don't have any duck food!
This is a physics lab.
Get out of here and don't come back. If you do, I'll nail your beak
to the floor!"
So the duck left. The next day, the duck waddled into the physics lab,
walked over to the scientist
and said, "You got any nails?" The scientist said, "No." The duck said,
"You got any duck food?"
( laughter ) ( Quackers quacking ) You know what, Quackers?
You're not looking so well. I think your jokes
I'm kind of falling down. >> Oh, no! are kind of lame. >> I know.
He's not feeling well. Oh, dear, he's kind of gotten
sick on telling all these jokes.
In come I Is ththat never cometh yet.use? Is there a quack doctor in the house?
The best Doc Quacker you may bet.
Here I come from the Continent
come to be a doctor? to cure this duck which Reid Miller hath slain. >> How did you
Icky Picky, France, and Spain. >> By my travels. >> Where have you traveled? >> I've been to
Three times to Oconomowoc. And now I've returned to Madison again.
What can you cure?
>> All sorts. I can cast out 14 devils from one's heart.
I can cast 21 out.
Down they thrittle throttle. >> Well then, cure my duck. >> Here, Quackers, take three sips at this bottle.
Arise and quack again. ( Quackers moans )
Oh, Reid, I quite forgot. I took the wrong cork from the >> You've killed my duck!
right bottle-- The right cork
from the wrong bottle!
But in my inside, outside, backside pocket,
In it, there is some I have another bottle.
hokey, pokey, snokey. It's sure to bring a dead duck back to life.
If you don't believe
these words I say, step in Dairy Dout
In come I, little Dairy Dout, with my shirt lap hanging out. and clear the way.
when out goes little Dairy Dout. Five yards in and it'll be five yards out,
( Quackers gulping ) >> Oh-ho-ho!
Oh, thank you very much Dairy Dout! I'm all better. Give her a big hand, folks.
( applause )
>> If you don't believe these words I say, step in Professor Sprott,
and clear the way.
( applause )
Welcome to "The Wonders of
And I've even played the Quack Physics." I have always wanted to be an actor.
Doctor in Mummer's plays before. But you know, sometimes I have
and I've completely forgotten my lines. In fact, that's one reason nightmares that I'm in a play
In physics, we like to work things out from principles and I went into physics.
of the Arts at the University of not just memorize them. But do you know this is the Year
Wisconsin, so I thought we should find some physicists who know something about the arts,
who can come and explain to us
how physics relates to the arts. Peter, who's on first?
What's on second. I Don't Know is on third. But enough about baseball, >> Oh, yes, who's on first.
I have found a dancing scientist we did that last year.
who recently appeared on "America's Got Talent." Please give a welcome
to Jeffrey Vinokur! ( applause )
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. ( musical flourish )
mad scientist. My name is Jeffrey Vinokur. I'm a real life dancing
I am here to talk to you about how the physics of motion.
extinguisher filled with carbon dioxide gas. What I have here is a fire
I use it to propel myself into motion.
If I shoot the gas in one direction, I'm able to move in
reduce the friction. the opposite direction. I use a skateboard just to
A man named Isaac Newton explained this through his
that for every action, there's Third Law of Motion, which says
an equal and opposite reaction. If you think of a rocket being fired, the hot gases go in one
direction, and the rocket goes
in the other direction. But did you know that Newton's Third Law of Motion can also
help you do dance moves like the moonwalk?
By providing a force with my feet in this direction,
I should be able to moonwalk
in the opposite direction. Hit it, DJ.
( musical flourish )
( applause ) Thank you.
I got a little carried away there.
All right. So, how many of you have seen
one of these toys before? Awesome.
It's called an Airzooka. What an Airzooka does
is it shoots harmless air vortex rings. I'm going to shoot some air vortex rings into the audience.
If you feel a gust of wind go by, just raise your hand.
Gotcha! ( laughter )
That's pretty interesting, but this would be a lot more fun if
we could see these air vortex rings.
I think this will be a lot more interesting. That's why I have a fog machine here.
( musical flourish ) Let's find out.
( applause ) >> Do it again!
Wasn't that a lot more
interesting? I thought so. The physics here is pretty
amazing, too. By very quickly forcing air out this front hole here, the air around the sides encounter some
friction and it slows down, while the air in the center keeps moving quickly. This causes the air to start
turning in the shape of a donut.
There's actually a really big Butorus right behind the wall a sover here called the Madison this shape a torus.
physicists are studying magnetic Symmetric Torus, where
to do for you today. fusion energy, and that could one day help power the world. Okay, I have one more demo
It's my favorite one. What I have here is a mixture of cornstarch and water.
Cornstarch is a powder
you can find in your kitchen. It's used to thicken sauces. When you mix the two together,
it forms what's called
a non-Newtonian fluid. Basically, by applying a force
motion, it behaves as a solid. on this material through
slowly, it behaves as a liquid ( pounds on surface ) But if you were to, say, move your fingers through more
because I'm not applying a lot of force. See that?
If I were to, say, apply a force
on this material with my feet by say, dancing on it, then I might
But I'd have to use a special dance style called jump style to provide enough force to keep afloat and special European
techno music to make this work. ( laughter )
DoOkay, let's give this a try.? >> Yeah!
( musical flourish )
( applause ) As you can see, when I stop
dancing, I start sinking. Thank you very much ladies and
gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed learning
about the physics of motion.
dance. Hey, Dr. Sprott, do you like to dance, too? >> Well, in fact I do like to
In fact, there was even-- ( laughter ) a picture of me--
( laughter and "oohs" )
I do like to dance. There was even a picture of me
in the newspaper dancing once. But you know, when you dance,
you do use your feet. It's a great way to build up
Don't you agree, Mr. Pete. heat. I think that's pretty neat.
You know, I did meet someone >> Yeah, congratulations, Professor Sprott. As a poet, you're smoking hot.
someone who was studying heat. >> Who's that, Mr. Pete?
the Madison Area Science >> Well, it's a scientist from
Technology. Please give a warm welcome for George the "Big Bang" Boomer.
( applause )
"Big Bang Boomer"?
Seriously? ( laughter )
spectacular special effects of Anyway, we've all seen
explosions and fires in movies and on television.
movies and television to be a form of art, I thought I might Since some people consider
blow stuff up and set things on fire? explain >> Yeah! works. So, would you like to see me
associate explosions with things >> Okay, well, most of us
that are hot. So I thought it would be interesting to make an explosion
out of something that's really
That's at more than 300 degrees below zero. II have this pop bottle here. bunch of liquid nitrogen.
this liquid nitrogen into this I'm going to pour about a cup of
pop bottle. That will take a little bit of time, because it likes to boil
off.
This is going to expand about 700 times its original volume. So that's going to put about 700
cups of nitrogen gas into this
pop bottle. I don't think it's going to hold it all, do you?
So, I'd have to be some kind of moron to screw a cap onto this. ( laughter )
And ginto this frame here.ut it
We'll hear more from that later.
( laughter ) Now, you'll notice that I have a
end of it. long stick with a match on the
You might wonder why I have a long stick with a match on the end of it.
I'll leave that to your imagination, but I'm going to light this match. Maybe.
There we go.
Now, up here I have a balloon, and I have a flammable explosive
It's called hydrogen. What can go wrong with hydrogen? gas in this balloon.
So what do you think is going to happen when I touch this to the
balloon?
All right, plug your ears. ( popping explosion )
( musical flourish )
( applause ) So, what happened there is when I lit it on fire, I burned a lot
of chemical bonds that held the hydrogen together.
Some of that energy that was stored in those bonds was
released as heat. That caused the volume to expand
a lot. That ran into the air around it,
and that produced a wave that went out across the audience. That's something we call a
You heard it, and some of you closer in probably felt it. That's how an explosion works. shockwave.
35 years, and I've been a storm chaser for about 20 years. I've been studying storms for
Here you can see a clip of a tornado I caught here in
southern Wisconsin a few years
ago. I thought it would be really
out a way to merge my interest interesting if I could figure
in heat with my interest in tornadoes. Would you like to see me make a
tornado out of fire?
>> Yeah! >> Okay, well, to begin that, I need to apply some of this
fuel here to this material. ( laughter )
match and I'm going to attempt Okay. Then I'm going to take another
to light it. Don't try this at home, kids.
I have this frame that I'm going
to on.
Then, in the other hemisphere.
I'll put it out before the Fire Department gets here.
( musical flourish )
( applause ) You'll notice that before I put
the sleeve on, the fire oscillated in and out.
getting into the fuel, so you'd have periods where the fire was at a maximum where the fuel had gone in, and that prevented, so
it died down. When I put the sleeve on, it
gases to rise out of. It left the base open for air to acted like a chimney. It gave a place for the hot
come in. When I rotated the base, the
rotation was caught in the
updraft, and that caused a vortex of fire. Anyway, thank you for having me
here, Professor Sprott. I hope I've inspired some of you
to learn about physics and the arts.
You've been a great audience. Thank you.
( applause ) That's somebody else's problem.
( laughter )
( musical flourish ) >> Well, I do have one other
demonstration that involves heat
right here. I have a long hollow pipe that has on the top several hundred
very tiny holes.
It's connected back here to a source of natural gas. That's like the gas that you
have in your homes, if you have a gas stove or gas furnace. It's a gas that we call methane.
There we go. I'll light the flame.
You see it makes a nice long flame.
loudspeaker, much like you have on your stereo set at home. It's connected back here to an Down at this end, I have a
When I turn it on, you can see audio oscillator.
in between. When I change the frequency, You can see that the flame is high in certain places, and low
distance between the large when I go down to a lower frequency, you can see the
flames gets longer. When I go up to a higher frequency, the opposite happens.
They get closer and closer
together. This is an illustration that sound in fact is a form of wave.
Ah-ha!
That sound, that noise, that song. It's my flugelhorn.
Oh. No, that's just a Ruben's Tube. George borrowed my flugelhorn and I have no idea where he put
it. Oh, well. I'm here today, my name's Don,
sound and music, and how those by the way, to talk to you about
Go ahead. Well, in order to have music, we Do you mind if I take over, Professor Sprott?
need instruments, right? In order to have an instrument,
we need three things. The first thing we need is
vibration. It can be the buzzing of a
mouthpiece, the plucking of a string, the hitting of a drum.
I'm going to spend a lot of time The second thing we need is resonance.
talking about that in just a second. The the third thing we need is
amplification.
Otherwise, the noise will be quieter than a mouse. I said I'm going to talk a lot
about resonance.
Resonance is the frequency at Thiswhich things vibrate. the Lots of things can vibrate. We can have a vibrating string.
We can have vibrating air in a
tube, like we had with the Ruben's Tube. But I'm going to show you an
example instead of a vibrating
A tuning fork, right. We use these to make sure all our instruments are playing the same note when we think they
are.
That way, it sounds good when we all play together.
It's kind of a big one. ( explosion ) ( audience I have a tuning fork here.
( musical flourish ) reacts and laughs )
Now, it's not entirely unheard ( applause )
of for us to have explosions in music, because an explosion, a shock wave is just a really,
really loud sound that's really,
We have cannons that go off in really short. Think for example of the "1812 Overture."
else's performance. ( laughter )of it. Of course, we also time them so they don't go off during someone
Tuning forks. I have a large tuning fork here, But oh, well. Where was I?
which will be a lot less loud, I assure you.
A large tuning fork here. We can listen to this, and it's going to make a low tone. So if we listen to it, you can
hear it.
It's a clear tone. ( single low tone ) Nice and low.
If we look on this, up on the oscilloscope up there,
On our oscilloscope, we see something like three peaks in this particular tone. The distance between those, as
we were talking about with the
flame over here, is called the wavelength. If instead we take something
that's smaller, like this smaller tuning fork, and listen to it.
It's much higher in tone. If you look at it up there, we ( single higher tone )
see that there's five peaks. It's a much shorter wavelength.
The way you can think of this is
that in general, large objects tend to have a low sound and
small objects have short have a long wavelength, where
wavelengths and have a soprano sound.
high, so I don't break the Soprano is a fancy word for
alliteration while I talk. All right, but it's not just the
how they resonate, how they vibrate. size of things that determine
It also has to do with the distribution of mass, which is a
fancy way of saying, you know,
this, we had our small tuning hfork before, which made a tone it's heavy and whatnot. Now, for a demonstration of
like this. ( single high tone )
Compare that to one where I've added some weights.
This is a slightly different pitch, and you might be able to
hear it if you have good ears.
( single high tone ) Could anyone hear the difference?
Yeah. >> Some people could. If you've got hearing before
might be able to tell the difference. This would serve you well if you that went off, you know, you
Although you can go into music do go into music.
the same time and see if if you don't have perfect pitch anyway. But let's listen to them both at
everyone can tell the difference between them. ( two tones )
Do you hear that effect,
that mwah-wah-wah? You can see the amplitude of these two waves together
oscillate.
It gets big and small, and big and small,
Think about this like you're out and big and small.
on the ocean, and you're in an inner tube. You have two boats that go by.
The first boat that goes by, its
wave will lift you high and low, high and low. Let's say you're sitting in the
high position, when the other wave comes by.
One, it can also be high, in Now, we can do one of two things.
which case you'd go really high. That's like the two tuning forks
One could be high and one could be low, in which case you'd stay right where you were. making a really loud sound.
That's what happens when we have They kind of cancel out.
that low sound. When these two things go, they go high sound, low sound, high
sound, low sound, and we get
music just with tuning forks, and tuning forks aren't the only effect. All right, now we don't make
thing that resonate. You might've seen, if you've
ever been to a wedding or some
formal event, when someone wants to get your attention, they'll
loud clear tone. rap on the glass and make a nice
This is another example of resonance.
resonate as I strike it, giving it vibration. Now, you might wonder about the Hesound that comes out.ass
That's the exact frequency at which the glass vibrates. Now, does glass vibrate really
If I were to take the glass and drop it from here, would it hit the ground and bounce and vibrate and jiggle?
No. >> No, what would happen beside being yelled at?
It would break, that's right. If we were to drop a glass, it's >> It would break.
vibrate really well. going to hit the ground and shatter, because glass doesn't
If we try to get it to vibrate too much by dropping it or
shatters. The same thing can happen if we send in sound on the frequency hitting it too hard, it just
In order to do this, we have a of its resonance.
device up here. This device has a speaker hooked up to an amplifier that can
produce a particular sound. In front of that, we have a glass.
that's required to get the exact Now, I don't have quite the ear
tone. However, the creator of this device, Steve Narf, who's
backstage, does have the ear
out here. Let's see if we can get him Letto break this glass.of applause and let's get him
I have to warn you ahead of time, it's actually quite loud, so you're going to want to plug ( appyour ears.
Also cross your fingers, because
( single high tone ) it's really hard to do. All right, so let's cross our fingers and plug our ears.
Wow. Let's thank him.
That looks like that got up to about 143 decibels, which is loud enough that if you were ( applause )
you might have actually hurt inside the box with that glass,
your ears. It's a little bit louder than a jet engine.
Out here, it's much quieter,
You'll notice as we play this, thankfully. Here we have a slow motion of a very similar break.
that it starts off by shaking. You can notice that by the
As we increase the amplitude, it little piece of paper attached.
we can't get it to shake any shakes more and more and harder and harder. Eventually, it shatters, because
( applause ) more. ( musical flourish )
So now hopefully, you know quite a few things about resonance, which is one of the three things
we need for instruments.
At this point, I'd pick up my flugelhorn and show you how it all works together, but again,
I can't seem to find
my flugelhorn. >> I found your mouthpiece. >> Oh, hey, Ella.
Well, my mouthpiece was next to the rest of it, so wherever my
Why are you smiling? mouthpiece was hidden, I'm sure the rest of it is nearby.
Yeah, George set it up and Smiling's not good. >> Remember that big bang a few minutes ago?
left it out here. >> I have your mouthpiece. ( laughter )
Hopping habaneros of Hades! Did George blow up
my flugelhorn? Mouthpiece, right.
( buzzes mouthpiece ) My mouthpiece isn't going to
We need the first thing, help, because we need three things.
something to vibrate. That's what the mouthpiece does. Then we need something to
resonate. A flugelhorn is a long length of
amplify it, like a bell. tube. Then we need something to
Oh, yeah, no, that might work. We have a long length of tube here and a bell at the end.
Do you think this might work? Let's try to improv.
you know, third trumpet or something like that. ( pla( laughter )otes ) That kind of sounds like,
with this that you can't do with >> Well, I can do something
an ordinary trumpet. Check this out. ( plays tone that oscillates )
( musical flourish )
( applause ) So, were you down at
the World Cup recently? Okay, she's showing an
interesting effect here. Ella is showing us the Doppler
Effect. The Doppler Effect says that if we have a source of sound that's
higher frequency, and when it's coming away from us, it's at a coming towards us, it's at a
lower frequency. Think of it like you're standing
on the side of a road and you have a car coming.
When it comes toward you, it's a higher frequency.
It passes you and it goes lower.
>> Should I make my improvaphone march on out of here? >> I think maybe we should.
Thank you, everyone.
You know, there are a lot of ( applause )
ways to make music. These days, we often use electronic instruments of one
sort or another.
In fact, maybe some of you have seen or have even owned one of the synthesizing keyboards that
can emulate many different
musical instruments. I actually have several electronic devices here that
make sound. The first one is a simple audio oscillator. It's now making a tone that is a
thousand cycles per second, one kilohertz.
But when I turn it down to a It's a very pure tone, not very musical, perhaps.
lower frequency, you can hear it goes to a lower pitch.
frequency, it goes to a higher When I turn it up to a higher
pitch. This suggests an interesting
in the room. experiment we can do right here
What I'm going to ask you to do is to hold up your hand if you can hear that sound.
Keep your hand up.
I'm going to turn up the frequency.
lower your hand. ( tone Wh increasing in pitch ) ng it,
At this point, about half of the
hands are up and half are down. If you look around, you'll notice whose hands are up.
It tends to be the little children. Because it is the case that as
ability to hear the very high frequencies. you get older, you lose your
not a great loss. But if you lose too much, of Fortunately, you don't have a lot of use for those, so it's
example of a device that is rather musical. It's something called a Over hertheremin. another
It was invented in 1920 by a
Russian physicist named Leon Theremin. It was originally intended as a
proximity detector for military use.
But he discovered that it made a very good musical instrument.
It works because it has two oscillators.
it's frequency by just bringing my hand closer. ( tone varies in pitch )and the other oscillator, I can change
frequency between the fixed oscillator and the variable oscillator. WhaIf I were a good musician,at
I could play you a tune-- ( tone varies in pitch )
But I have something even better without even touching the instrument.
for you. We have an old video clip of Leon Theremin himself playing
the theremin that he invented.
This shows one use
of electricity in the arts. I have one final example of an electric circuit
that makes a sound. I'm sort of proud of this circuit because it's something
just this past year. that I invented
When I turn it on, you hear a sound, not very musical perhaps. But when I turn up this knob,
I reach a point where a sound comes in that's half the
previously hearing. If I continue to turn it up-- fr( buzzing sound )ve below you will hear what we call
the sound of chaos. Chaos is a very irregular,
unpredictable variation. I'm particularly interested in
chaos, because that's the area
the arts, I would like to introduce my esteemed colleague To Professor Michael Winokur.es of how electricity is used in
Thank you for that kind introduction, Professor Sprott. I've just come from the ( electricity lab.
If the sound of physics isn't frightening enough, perhaps you would like to take in a horror
show,( laughter )ot this one!
Can you hear me?! Give my creation
Electricity has long been used in the movies to shock and frighten audiences. You may not know it, but Thomas
Edison, inventor of the electric
first Frankenstein film back in light bulb, 1910.nvolved with Electricity is nothing more than His name even appears in the
It still amazes me that one of electrons in motion.
nature's smallest things, the unseen electron is responsible for some of the most dramatic
displays of energy and power. A single electron's force is
But there is strength in small, too small for you to feel.
numbers, if you know how to move them around a bit.
demo, I've brought my monster's head for you. I think it's back here. So f( laughter ) electricity
But my monster needs help.
He needs a body. I'll give it back.
with long, fine hair. Anybody want to...? This little girl had her hand up Preferably one with a head
Come on down, dear. I think that'll work.
Okay, your name is? >> Mariah.
>> Mariah, that's a lovely name. We're going to do a little
experiment here.
All I'm going to do is rub, rub, We're going to transfer electrons between your hair and the balloon.
rub. Hold still. ( laughter )
We get to see the electrons' force. ( musical flourish )
( applause )
Thank you, Mariah. This is an example of a static
The electrons don't go back, electricity.
but they stay put. We're going to park my monster
rest of the show. ( musical flourish ) over here, so he can watch the
Close enough. Over in the corner, we have a device called Jacob's Ladder. ( laught )
( pipe organ music )
To make it work, we need to push the electrons from one metal
Scientists call that push voltage, or electric potential. Once the electrons find the weak electrode to the other.
and jump back, creating an link in air gap in between
electric arc. To start the process, I merely flip the switch.
The electricity heats the air,
and the hot air rises, drawing the electric arc with it. The bright color that you see
is merely due to air molecules
in the gap that are excited by that electricity. You can do a similar experiment
at home with a nine-volt battery
and your tongue! ( audience groans ) You will feel that electric
current.
a little bigger demonstration Aof electricity.. It coulIs that not so?easant. But I su>> Yes!ou'd like
In our laboratory, we have
the ability to create lightning, just like in nature.
storm, air currents move vast quantities of electrons between the ground and the clouds. In nature, during a thunder
and jump back. They, too, find the weak link
You see the lightning. We have a short video capturing nature in the act.
( no audio )
But here, we have a device
called the Tesla Coil. ( suspenseful organ music ) ( laughter )
Underneath, there's a motor that
turns paddles that play the role of the air current. They move the electrons from one
side, from the left to the
escape through the air to the rmetal ball, back to the ground million volts in this coil. They collect at this tip and
and the earth. Shall we see?
Yeah! >> I'll just go over here,
turn on the power, engage the solenoid.
( loud electrical buzzing )
( musical flourish )
Now, you folks in the front rows ( applause )
may smell something sickly sweet.
Yeah, that's smell is ozone. >> Yes.
Lightning produces lots of it. It won't hurt you too much, if
( laughter ) you only breath a little bit.
But something comes with lightning, something sudden.
( crashing thunder ) Can somebody help me out?
A sharp crack of thunder. For our last electricity demo, we have a device over here
called a capacitor. Can you all help me out and say capacitor.
Good job. A capacitor is a simple device, two metal plates held really, really, really close together.
With it, we will create thunder,
I hope, a sharp crack of thunder.
move 10,000 million million electrons between the two metal plates. When I release it, they will all
go back through the aluminum
Yeah. ( loud popping sound ) At 5,000 volts, almost there. Are we ready?
You've been a great audience. I hope you've learned a few things about electricity. Electricity sometimes seems like
magic, but there are other
accomplished physicists here who know something about that.
You know, Professor Sprott, I was backstage waiting to come out and tell everyone about magic, and my needles were going
crazy.
Tesla Coil. >> Right, and electricity and magnetism are very closely >> I bet it was our million-volt
There was a current flow from the top of the Tesla Coil up to the ball, it created a magnetic linked tfield. other.
You know, let me show you what
that might look like. It'll look like magic in the meantime.
Can everybody see all my magnet needles up here.
Can anyone tell me how I I'm going to wave my hands over them and they start to dance.
that can act at a distance, which means the two objects don't need to be touching each Magnetism is one of the forces
push on another object. Because of that, we can do some really neat things with magnets. other in order for a magnet to
right here, which is just filled One of my favorites is this box
with glycerin and iron filings. I shook it up so that the iron filings are fairly evenly
distributed throughout the whole
thing. Then, when I slide this magnet
iron filings move and line up along what are called the magnetic field lines. It gives you an idea of what a
magnet is actually doing. It's pulling things toward it.
toward it, along its field It's pulling anything that is subject to a magnetic force
lines. You know, when you see magic in a movie or on TV, it's probably
because somebody in the special effects department really knows their physics.
I've got this aluminum cylinder. Take for example, levitation.
It's not levitating. It's subject to the laws of physics, just like everything
else out there. But I can levitate it.
I kind of feel like I should I take it and put it in here. I can let go and it just hovers.
pull out my wand and do an incantation.
( musical flourish )
( applause ) As you may have guessed, that wasn't magic that made it
levitate. It was magneticism. I have a wafer right here that's
yttrium barium copper oxide. made out of something called
It's a type of ceramic that if we made an atomic model of it,
This is repeated again and again looks like this.
and again throughout the ceramic.
property that when it gets cold enough, electrons can move This ceramic has this special
make a magnet. through it very, very easily. And those moving electrons can
This is what's called a super conductor. All it takes is a little bit of
movement by an electron to
create a current that keeps going and going and going. If I take this little magnet and
place it on there, it just sits on top of the wafer of yttrium
barium copper oxide. I pour some liquid nitrogen onto
it and what happens is that as
starts to levitate. It floats right off the top of colder, it's easier for the electrons to move, so the magnet
( musical flourish ) the wafer, almost like magic.
( applause ) There we go.
of magic. I bet many of you have been to a >> You know, that does remind me
I wonder why they always use a magic show, and you've seen a magician levitate a lady.
didn't know is that I'm a magician. >> You're a magician? But anyway>> You bet. I bet you
In addition to everything else? >> In addition to everything
In fact, it's often come in very else.
handy. In fact, just the other day, I
asked them for a 3-foot-long went to the hardware store and I
piece of rope. They said, "Well, we don't have a 3-foot-long piece of rope,
but we have these two little short pieces." I said, "Well, heck,
( musical flourish ) that's no problem."
( laughter ) I said, "Well, heck,
that's no problem, because
I'm a magician." Any magician can take two short pieces of rope and
change them into one long piece.
( applause ) Now, I didn't really do that at all, I just made that up.
But I did go to the hardware
store and ask for a piece of rope. They said, well, you want the
kind of rope that has two ends
on one end and two ends on the other end?
has two ends on one end and one end on the other end? I said, no, no, no. I just want the regular kind of
rope, the kind where when you tie a knot in it, you have
a rope with three knots in it.
( musical flourish )
( applause ) >> That's quite impressive. You know, I've dabbled in a
little magic myself.
Do I have a volunteer from the audience who's not too attached to their head, who would like to
give me a hand? How about the young gentleman in orange, right here.
I'm also going to ask one of our Are you ready to come up?
physicists, Marty Lichtman to come out and give us a hand. What's your name sir?
Austin. >> Austin, all right. Austin, we're going to come right back here.
I'm going to have Marty and Professor Sprott lift up this tablecloth of magic, and I'm
You ready to do this, Austin? going to cho our head off.
You do know the difference
between a magician and a physicist?
demonstrations, right? They both do interesting
But the magicians, they never tell you how they do their tricks.
They physicists, you just can't get them to shut up about it. ( laughter )
Ready? >> Okay, I think I've done it.
( musical flourish ) ( applause )
So, Austin, how are you feeling?
( laughter ) >> Separated from my body.
He feels separated
from his body. I must have done
But as you guys may have a pretty good job.
guessed, I didn't actually chop Austin's head off. He's still talking to us and
moving. What it is, is it's called an optical illusion. I will let Marty explain to you
what happened while I reattach
Austin's head. >> Well, Ella, I think the
everyone is if I just walk in front here. Oh, look at that. I grew an extra pair of legs.
Oh, it must be the pair of
Because what you see as the back legs I'm missing. Yeah, and you know, the table also grew an extra leg.
leg is actually a reflection of this leg in front, in a mirror that goes
straight down the middle. >> Austin, thank you very much. ( musical flourish )
( applause )
>> I don't know, I think he should've quit while he was a head.
( laughter )
>> With that joke, I think I'll leave you. Have a good time.
( musical flourish )
( applause ) >> Thanks, Ella.
I've just come from the laser lab, where we play with a lot of
light. Light is really important in
the arts. We started out the evening
most of us get our stories hearing some stories. These days, as George mentioned,
through movies and television. There are two aspects to the way
television that make the that we use light in movies and
The first I want to talk to you about is persistence of vision. I have here a box that I call a laser oscilloscope, which will
help me explain.
If I turn this on, and we turn down the lights, you can see up there on the screen, there's a
single dot from a laser.
I have a couple of mirrors here that the laser is bounced off. If I move them, I can move the
dot around. Also, if I use some of this fog,
then I can show you. I'm going to turn this off, and
I can show you where the laser
I have a couple of motors attached to these mirrors. Okay? I'm going to put this back.
that dot moving around. I can make some really cool If I turnpatterns.otors and stThese are called Lissajousrt
figures, which is a mathematical
term that means fancy stars. But if the motor moves fast enough, you start to see solid
lines and curves. I promise you, that really still
is just one dot. What's going on here is that the
laser light stimulates the
photoreceptors in your eyes. If the dot comes back around
is still stimulated by the time it comes back, and you see a fast enough, the photoreceptor
That's persistence of vision. >> I've been following you! solid cur>> Oh, no!hough it really is just one dot.
I can never seem to get rid of My evil nemesis, my shadow.
you. >> That's because you can only
where I, Shadow, can travel as travel at the speed of light,
pretty fast, actually. fast as I like. >> Hold on, Shadow. You know the speed of light is
So, here, take for example this ruler. This is 30cm long.
You know, light could travel
that distance in one-billionth of a second.
here to the back of the room and If I shine a beam of light from
back, about a hundred times as long, 30 meters, it could travel
ten-millionth of a second. that distance in one
or 300 million meters per Notsecond.uh? >> T>> That's right.st. That's 186,000 miles per second,
Watch how fast I go down >> But I'm faster.
and back. >> Let's see it.
( musical flourish )
( laughter ) >> I've got to admit, that was
So, I'm not quite as fast as pretty good.
you. But when you surprised me, I was
persistence of vision. talking to the audience about
There's something else I wanted to show them involving persistence of vision.
But I need to be pretty fast in order to demonstrate it.
was shining on the screen, but Now, when we used the laser light, you could see it when it
you couldn't see it in the middle of the air, until I
off the fog. sprayed the fog and it reflected
The same thing happens when you're at a movie theater, right?
The light comes out of the
projector, and you don't see it until it shines on the screen, unless maybe there's some dust
in the air near the projector.
Do you think in the future, maybe we could have some sort of movie theater where there's no
screen at all?
>> A movie theater without a screen? No way.
Well, I can do it for you right here, but I need to be
It's Einstein! pretty fast to do it. Let's give this a try.
( musical flourish ) >> So, what's going on here,
is you're actually only seeing
one line at a time reflected off of this rod.
older television set would work. It's very similar to how an
you think you're seeing the But entire image at once., he phot( applause )n your eyes don't respond quickly enough and
off, let's talk a little bit As long as we've got the lights
the colors of the rainbow. about the colors that light is composed of. White light is composed of all
that's shining through this triangular prism. The prism splits up the light, projector making white light
components of its spectrum. Now, when you watch your it refracts it into all the
television, your TV can actually only make three colors, red,
green and blue. It can't make the yellow. It can't make the orange. It can't make indigo.
It can't make violet, or
anything in between, except for red, green and blue. So how is it that when you watch
TV you see all these beautiful
images? Well, there's a trick to that, too.
Let me show you what happens
I get magenta. if I mix blue light with green. I get teal. If I mix blue and red,
white in the center there. If I mix red and green, I get yellow. And if I mix all three, I get
Ones that are most sensitive to Welred, ones that are mostyou asensitive to green, and ones color receptors in your eyes.
When you look at true white-white, like the white that's being produced on the that are most sensitive to blue.
photoreceptors are stimulated, left there, all three of those
the red, green and blue. Same thing happens when I trick you, by showing only those three
colors, the red, green and blue.
You think that you're seeing true white light. >> But watch what happens when I
cast a shadow.
>> There's three of them! >> That's right. So as my hand moves in front of
the light from each projector,
that light is blocked and subtracted out from the image on the screen.
Subtraction, that reminds me
of something. You know, Professor Sprott's been working on some sort of
painting back there.
The way that paint is mixed is actually very different from the
I think it's more up your alley, way that light is mixed.
Shadow. >> Absolutely. When we mix light colors,
we see that they add. But when we mix paint colors, they subtract.
Oooh! Wow! Here I have yellow and blue.
>> I get green. Remember when we mixed green and red light, we got yellow.
But now-- ( loud buzzer ) Ick.
so they've all subtracted out, We mix all the colors,
and it's just dark. >> Okay, thanks. Hmm, mmm.
Mmmm. ( laughter )
Mmm, ah.
( musical flourish )
Delicious. ( laughter )
know about how paint colors mix, Professor Sprott, now that you
you should make a pretty great artist, so we'll leave you
Say goodnight, Shadow. to your work.
>> Goodnight, Shadow. ( applause )
( musical flourish )
>> You know, Professor Sprott, I see you've been busy painting over there throughout the show.
Well, I have. Would you like to see what I've done? >> Yeah, I think we'd all like
to see it.
Uh, I don't see anything. >> I've Do you?rking on something th>> Yeah!trates both physics and art.
Well, that's where the >> No!
( musical flourish ) physics comes in. >> It does?
( applause ) >> That's because this is painted with fluorescent
paint.
at a different frequency. In this case, we have back here an ultraviolet that is shining frequency, and then re-radiates
That causes the paint, on the paint.
each different paint, to emit a different color. So when I turn the light off,
the picture seems to go away, because the fluorescent paint itself is simply white. It does emit those particular
colors. I would like to claim that
I painted that, but it was actually painted by
one of our longtime assistants, Rebecca Nonn. She's very talented.
do things like that. I only wish that I were able to
But I did become interested in art once, quite by accident.
some mathematical equations and the patterns that were generated I was solving on my computer
by an art professor who said, oh, yes, these have quite a lot lookof aesthetic value.tic. He said I ought to write a book
about it. And I did.
came out recently, called "Images of a Complex World." In fact, I wrote several books, the most recent of which just
patterns, which in fact come from solving equations whose solutions are chaotic. of examples of these artistic
attractors. This book is full of them. These are called strange
table outside the lecture room If you're interested in this, you can have a look at it on the
on your way out. Now, to conclude the show,
Twenty-one years ago, I was doing one of these shows and I we have a special treat.
of the School of Music. I recognized him because he's also the director of the Capitol and I saw Professor Jim Latimer
have probably heard play. He came down after the show and I jokingly said, "Hey, why don't City Band, which many of you
for The Wonders of Physics." you write some theme music
theme music that he had written for "The Wonders of Physics." We've been using it ever since. We have a special treat, because
it happens that today Jim Latimer is with us. Jim, would you stand up?
Thank you, Jim. I asked Jim, what the heck ( applause )
He said, oh, I've always been interested in physics. is a musician doing at a physics show.
In fact, I'm a ham radio operator.
That's also how I got interested
in physics, through ham radio. In honor of the Year of the Arts, in collaboration with
Frank Ferriano, Jim Latimer actually composed a new version of "The Wonders of Physics" theme, and it was premiered by
the Madison Marimba Quartet just
this past Christmas. It runs about three minutes.
entirety at the very end of the show for those of you who would like to stay around and listen. Sometimes science is portrayed
as being in competition with the
arts. But I hope we've convinced you that the two are very closely
related.
All of the arts rely on principles of physics, and scientists enjoy and profit from
the arts, just as much as anyone
else. Thus, I want to encourage you to learn all you can about science.
But also, if you have artistic
talents, you should develop those as well. Even if you're like me and have
limited artistic skills, you can
still enjoy the artistic talents of others.
the same way we have ended every Now I'd like to end the show in
one of the shows over the past 28 years, by making for you a cloud.
For that purpose, we use a tank containing 25 liters of liquid
tank. That forces the liquid nitrogen to come up into this pipe, and We force nitrogen gas into this
on the top. The liquid, and also the gas, is still very, very cold. It cools the air above, and the
water vapor in the air will condense into tiny droplets of
liquid water, and that's what we call a cloud.
So with that, I will put on my
hat and let you hear the new version of "The Wonders of
I thank you all for coming. ( applause ) Physics music.