You no longer need to go to the laboratory to witness something amazing. You just need to turn on your computer and watch a video on a topic of interest.
Here are some interesting phenomena and the scientific theories behind them.
Prince Rupert drops
Prince Rupert's drops have fascinated scientists for hundreds of years. In 1661, an article was presented at the Royal Society of London about these strange objects, similar to glass tadpoles. The drops are named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who first introduced them to his cousin, King Charles II. Obtained when droplets of molten glass fall into water, they exhibit strange properties when exposed to force. Hit the Prince Rupert blob with a hammer on the rounded end and nothing happens. However, with the slightest damage to the tail section, the entire droplet instantly explodes. The king was interested in science and therefore asked the Royal Society to explain the behavior of the drops.
Scientists were at a dead end. It took nearly 400 years, but modern scientists armed with high-speed cameras were finally able to see the droplets explode. A shockwave can be seen traveling from tail to head at a speed of about 1.6 km / s when stress is released. When a drop of Prince Rupert hits the water, the outer layer becomes solid while the inner glass remains melted. As the inner glass cools, it shrinks in volume and creates a strong structure, making the drop head incredibly resistant to damage. But as soon as the weaker tail breaks, the tension is released and the whole drop turns into a fine powder.
Promotional video:
Light movement
Radioactivity was discovered when it was discovered that there was some kind of radiation that could light up photographic plates. Since then, people have looked for ways to study radiation in order to better understand this phenomenon.
One of the earliest and yet coolest ways was to create a fog camera. The principle of operation of the Wilson chamber is that vapor droplets condense around ions. When a radioactive particle passes through the chamber, it leaves a trail of ions in its path. When vapor condenses on them, you can directly observe the path the particle has traveled.
Today, fog chambers have been replaced by more sensitive instruments, but at one time they were vital for the discovery of subatomic particles such as the positron, muon, and kaon. Fog cameras are useful today for displaying various types of radiation. Alpha particles show short, heavy lines, while beta particles have longer, thinner lines.
Superfluid liquids
Everyone knows what a liquid is. And superfluids are more than that. When you stir a liquid such as tea in a mug, you can get a swirling vortex. But after a few seconds, friction between the fluid particles will stop the flow. There is no friction in a superfluid liquid. And the mixed superfluid liquid in the cup will continue to rotate forever. Such is the strange world of superfluids.
In a similar way, fountains can be built that will continue to work without wasting energy, because in a superfluid liquid, no energy is lost through friction. Do you know what is the strangest property of these substances? They can leak out of any container (provided it is not infinitely high) because the lack of viscosity allows them to form a thin layer that completely covers the container.
For those looking to play around with a superfluid liquid, there is some bad news. Not all chemicals can assume this state. And these few are capable of this only at temperatures close to absolute zero.
Ice wave
The frozen lake can be an amazing place to watch. As the ice cracks, sounds can echo across the surface. Looking down, you can see the animals that are frozen and trapped in an ice trap. But perhaps the most amazing feature of the frozen lake is the formation of waves of ice that fall onto the shore.
If, when the reservoir freezes, only the top layer becomes solid, it is possible that it will begin to move. If a warm wind blows over a lake, the entire layer of ice can begin to move. But he must go somewhere.
When the ice reaches the shore, sudden friction and stress causes it to collapse and accumulate. Sometimes these ice waves can reach several meters and travel over land. The cracking of the crystals that make up the ice sheet creates an eerie tickling sound near the ice waves, like a thousand broken glass.
Volcanic shock wave
A volcanic eruption is almost the most powerful explosion that humans can see on Earth. In a matter of seconds, the energy equivalent to several atomic bombs can launch thousands of tons of rocks and debris into the air. It's best not to be too close when this happens.
However, some people are interested in these things and stop near the erupting volcano to record a video of it. In 2014, there was an eruption of Tavurvura in Papua New Guinea. Luckily for us, there were people there to film it. When the volcano exploded, one could see the shock wave going up into the clouds and on the sides towards the observer. It swept over the boat like a thunderclap.
The explosion that caused the shockwave was likely caused by the accumulation of gas inside the volcano as magma blocked its exit. With the sudden release of this gas, the air around it compressed, which generated a wave that scattered in all directions.
Volcanic lightning
When in 79 A. D. there was an eruption of Vesuvius, Pliny the Younger noticed something strange in this explosion: "There was a very strong darkness, which became more and more terrifying because of the fantastic flashes of flame, reminiscent of lightning."
This is the first recorded mention of volcanic lightning. When a volcano raises a thundercloud of dust and rocks into the sky, huge lightning bolts are visible around it.
Volcanic lightning does not occur with every eruption. It is caused by the accumulation of charge.
In the heat of a volcano, electrons can easily be thrown off the atom, thus creating a positively charged ion. Free electrons are then transferred when the dust particles collide. And they join other atoms, forming negatively charged ions.
Due to the different sizes and speeds with which the ions move, it becomes possible for a charge to accumulate in the ash plume. When the charge is high enough, it produces incredibly fast and hot flashes of lightning, as seen in the video above.
Levitating frogs
Every year there are winners of the Shnobel Prize for research that "makes people laugh first and think second."
In 2000, Andrey Geim received the Shnobel Prize for making a frog fly with magnets. His curiosity flared up as he poured some water directly into the machine with powerful electromagnets around it. The water stuck to the walls of the pipe, and the drops even began to fly. Geim discovered that magnetic fields can act on water strong enough to overcome the Earth's gravitational pull.
Game went from water droplets to live animals, including frogs. They could levitate due to the water content in the body. By the way, the scientist does not exclude a similar possibility in relation to a person.
The disillusionment with the Nobel Prize lessened somewhat when Geim received a real Nobel Prize for his participation in the discovery of graphene.
Laminar flow
Can you separate mixed liquids? It is quite difficult to do this without special equipment.
But it turns out possible under certain conditions.
If you pour orange juice into the water, then you are unlikely to succeed. But using dyed corn syrup, as shown in the video, you can do just that.
This is due to the special properties of the syrup as a liquid and the so-called laminar flow. This is a type of movement within fluids where the layers tend to move in one direction without mixing.
This example is a special type of laminar flow known as Stokes flow, where the fluid used is so thick and viscous that it hardly allows particles to diffuse. The substances are mixed slowly, so there is no turbulence that would actually mix the colored droplets.
It only seems that the dyes are mixing because the light passes through the layers that contain the individual dyes. By slowly changing the direction of movement, you can return the dyes to their original position.
Vavilov - Cherenkov effect
You might think that nothing moves faster than the speed of light. Indeed, the speed of light seems to be the limit in this universe that nothing can break. But this is true as long as you are talking about the speed of light in a vacuum. When it penetrates into any transparent medium, it slows down. This is due to the fact that the electronic component of electromagnetic waves of light interacts with the wave properties of electrons in the medium.
It turns out that many objects can move faster than this new, slower speed of light. If a particle enters water at a speed of 99% of the speed of light in a vacuum, then it catches up with light, which moves in water at a speed of 75% of the speed of light in a vacuum. And we can really see how it happens.
When a particle passes through the electrons of the medium, light is emitted as it destroys the electron field. When launched, a nuclear reactor in water glows blue because it ejects electrons at precisely such high speeds - as seen in the video. The eerie glow of radioactive sources is more mesmerizing than most people think.