Replying to LO28752 --
Dear LO' ers
At described at several occasions the Exploratorium, for instance in his
answer to Terri Deems:
> The door to my office opens to the Exploratorium where young and old can
> have hand-on experiences on a diverse collection of apparatus. The purpose
> of all these apparatus is to provide explorers with the senstations sight,
> sound and touch.
I wonder At, if the exploratorium contains a 'wave machine'. I have seen
this apparatus during the famous Christmas Lectures at the Royal
Institition, London. I once have written of these lectures on this list, a
couple of years ago. These lectures are given by top-scientists to an
audience of children, and the tradition of these lectures goes more than
150 years back when Faraday started with them. Unfortunately, since a
couple of years it is not the BBC who broadcast these lectures anymore,
but Channel Five, which I cannot receive here in Holland.
This wave machine originated from that time (if I remember well, it was
Faraday himselve who developed this apparatus especially for
demonstrations during these lectures).
I try to describe this machine. The elegance is that it is so simple. For
a good effect one needs a central stick of some 2 - 3 metres. This stick
hangs on both ends on a standard, so that it is in a horizontal position.
Very regularly at each centimetre or so of this bar is a smaller stick
that is balanced in its middle on the horizontal bar. Thus the smaller
sticks (of some 40 centimetres; 20 centimetres on each side of the bar)
could rock gently up and down, like a seesaw. I think the best is if these
smaller sticks have a central hole through which the long bar fits. In
this way you get a long comb with some 200 teeth that could rock up and
down on both sides of the long bar. It is critical that all these 'teeth'
could rock with the same frequency and thus they should be made from the
same material. In rest, the whole construction is in horizontal position
(bar, and teeth/sticks).
If you now walk along this construction while you pass your hand along
these sticks and pushing them down during the passage, a fantastic wave
develops. It is realy a marvelous effect and very instructive. One of the
instructive insights are the two movements: the progressing wave and the
simple swinging of the sticks, up and down (seemingly no relation with the
wave movement; all together form a wave - holism!)
In a mail to this list during Rick's 'fishing' I wrote to At another
contribution. Possibly that mail is lost during that period. It is not so
important. But I wrote At in relation to "Motivation to learn when in
Despair" (the 'caravan-family') that it was maybe worth to give all
attention to the 'bad' boy of the family. He was educated for carpenter. I
suggested that he might become interested in making objects of art from
waste material.
Dear At, you see that this family is still in my mind. And now I described
the wave machine, it might be an idea if this boy receives an 'official'
commission from your university (the exploratorium department) to make a
wave machine for the Exploratorium. The boy could receive a small amout of
money for the work, but the main reward will be the mention of his name to
the apparatus. Do you think that this is worth trying??
Leo Minnigh
--Minnigh <minnigh@dds.nl>
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