Get one from these fine sources:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Floating Ring Magnet Set
From Amazon: BUY NOW Floating Ring Magnet Set
Magnetic Levitation in 1D: a stack of dipole magnets. Note how the spacing between any two magnets is proportional to weight of how many magnets there are above the gap. Gravity vs Magnetism.
Get some of these grow-spheres here:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Growing Spheres
Super Absorbent Polymer: poly-acrylamide polymer crystals are able to absorb up to 200 times their volume of water. Here seven small spheres, approximately 4mm in diameter, were immersed in water for three hours, after which they were slightly more than 23mm across. The final gel sphere is more than 99.5% water- and they bounce!
The heat pipe kit includes the pipe and a copper rod:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Heat Pipe Demo Kit
Get a heat pipe here (various sizes and shapes):
From Amazon: BUY NOW: Heat Pipe
Here is the liquid crystal sheet used in the video (range 20-25C):
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW liquid crystal thermometer sheet
Heat Pipe: a device that transfers heat with great efficiency- as demonstrated by this fantastic kit from @educational_innovations . Here a liquid crystal goes from green (room temp) to black (near freezing) showing the heat transfer to a piece of ice through a heat pipe (top) and a similar sized piece of solid copper rod (bottom). As you can see the heat pipe cools much faster than the copper rod even though copper is an excellent conductor of heat. The heat pipe is a thin shell of copper that surrounds a tube of sponge like material filled with some water vapor and sealed with a low pressure inside. The heat is transferred from one end to the other by the phase transition of water- at the warm end water in the sponge evaporates into vapor absorbing heat energy, the vapor travels down the hollow core to the cold end where it condenses into liquid releasing heat energy. The water is wicked by the sponge to the warm end and the process repeats. Heat pipes like this one pull heat away from the CPUs in modern computers preventing them from melting. The amazing heat transfer ability is clearly felt in the fingertips if one places the copper rod and heat pipe into a glass of ice water-the heat pipe immediately gets cold!
Get one here:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Magnetic Sand Timer
Magnetic Sandglass: ferromagnetic sand collects above a neodymium magnet in the wood base. Each particulate of ferromagnetic iron becomes a temporary dipole magnet in the presence of the magnetic field in the base. The tiny dipoles link up north ends to south ends as they attempt to align with the magnetic field lines. These stacks topple over due to gravity creating interesting patterns.
Available in many sizes and colors:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Click Activated Resuable Heat Pack
From Amazon: BUY NOW Click Activated Reusable Heat Pack
Exothermic Crystallization Heat Pack: real-time instant crystallization of a supercooled solution. Solid sodium acetate melts at 137F (58C), but it will stay in liquid form as it cools to room temperature creating a supersaturated and supercooled state- the solution stays in the liquid form until a seed crystal, provided by clicking the metal disk, initiates the solidification. The resulting white crystal is actually quite hot; solid states have lower energy than liquid states and thus the difference in energy is given up as heat that raises the temperature back up to the melting temp, and you can see in the few seconds of the video that the temperature rises from 26C to 34C. This pack is reusable many times- just boil the pack until all the crystal is melted to reset.
The essence of a great physics toy: simple inexpensive design showing complex physics
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Reaction Rocket
Reaction Rocket: projectile launch via momentum transfer in slow motion. The superball/straw base bounces off the table top and then immediately collides with the bottom of the rocket sending it off with a velocity slightly less than 3 times the velocity of the rising ball (true if the ball is more than three times the mass of the rocket). Newton's third law in action! Note that the rocket rises much higher than the drop height (up to 9 times higher).
Get a set here:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Newton's Yoyo
Newton Yo Yo: Newton's 3rd Law states that action force equals opposite reaction force- the the green and yellow spheres have equal mass, so the forces of the collision provide accelerations that are equal and opposite such that the spheres trade places.
Get one here!
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW: WindGyro
WindGyro: Spin this top up with a puff of air! Small magnets keep the top secured to the base so that a stream of air will induce rotation as the air flows through the engineered turbine blades of the elegant spiral structure.
Get this inexpensive device here:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW: Static Spheres
Click here for other static electricity devices
Static Spheres: triboelectric effect toy. The red acetate spheres are given an acquired net negative charge, and their mutual repulsion allows them to jump a centimeter or more as charge is manipulated on the PET plastic container. Bringing an object near the container momentarily moves electrons (charge) around creating repulsive forces (sphere v. sphere) and attractive forces (spheres and container) resulting in the observed motions. The red spheres interact with each other without coming into physical contact (as shown in 240 fps slow motion) as like charges repel. Shaking the system a bit allows the red spheres to pick up charge in the first place by colliding with the container.
Get some of these grow-spheres here:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Growing Spheres
Poly-acrylamide Polymer Vanishing Act: these spheres of hydrophilic polymer have an almost identical index of refraction as that of water- thus when submersed they become invisible. Note the elasticity of these spheres from the way they bounce, while at the same time they refract their surroundings as a spherical lens. The super absorbent spheres start as hard crystals with a radius of 2mm and grow to 11mm when immersed in water. So much physics going on here!
Get a PhoTOP from these fine vendors (comes with laser pointer!):
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW PhoTOP
Another amazing spinning device by Prof. Ken Brecher! Get his other spinning tops here:
From Etsy: BUY NOW: PhiTOP, PiTOP, eTOP, iTOP, DeltaCELT
The PhoTOP: phosphorescent glow illuminates the intricate path of a 405nm laser pointer beam on a balanced spinning disk. Let the disk set alone for a few minutes to allow the traces to fade- and repeat again and again to experiment making new patterns.
Many colors (and two sizes) to choose from:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW
Ooze Tube
From Amazon: BUY NOW
Ooze Tube
The physics of the liquid rope-coil effect is pretty complex. Here is a recent scientific paper on the topic with nice illustrations.
Journal of Fluid Mechanics: Multiple coexisting states of liquid rope coiling
Ooze Tube: viscous polyisobutene fluid timer toy. Some interesting physics phenomena are found in this kinetic art novelty item: the "liquid rope-coil effect" where the fluid thread coils and stacks as it lands on the pooling surface, and a curious periodicity in the rate of flow that is related to the formation of non-spherical bubbles as the air and fluid trade places (shown in time-lapse). The physics of the coiling effect is complex (see the link in my blog). Broadly speaking the coiling is due to the bottom of the fluid rope widening at the contact point with the surface, and as it widens the fluid slows down but not evenly. This uneven rate of flow produces a bend and the elasticity of the stream constrains the rope to a limited radius- hence a stack of coils.
Get this affordable and fun kit here:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Mystery Marbles Puzzle Kit
Mystery Marbles Puzzle: a physics brain teaser (now available as a kit) what's going on here? Three glass marbles can move but stay separated in this liquid filled tube no matter the orientation- why do they not touch? Swipe for reveal of components.
See also: Poly-acrylamide Polymer Vanishing Act
Get an easy to assemble kit here (or just buy the replacement wire to build your own like in the video):
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Simplest Motor Kit
Electric Motor Build: One of the most important inventions consists of only three basic components as shown here: coil, magnet, and a battery with lead wire posts. The wire of the spinning coil has an insulating coating on it- and this coating is carefully scrapped off one side of the thin wire on each end. When current passes through the coil it becomes an electromagnet and the permanent magnet repels it making it spin- as it turns the current goes on and off depending on if the copper wire posts are in contact with the bare wire side (current on) or the part of the wire with the insulating coating intact (current off). When the current is off momentum keeps the rotation going until the next push. The physics of converting electric energy to rotational kinetic energy- and a fun DIY project!
Get the kit here!
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Melting Snowman Kit
Viscoelastic "Melting Snowman": non-newtonian flow is demonstrated by these blobs of viscoelastic silicon polymer (aka Silly Putty) in the shape of snowman- if force is applied over a short period of time the substance shows elastic properties (bounces like a superball), but if the force is applied slowly the substance flows like a viscous liquid (flattens under gravity over a few hours as shown here). Thus this snowman does not melt because it is already liquid, one that flows slowly though. Mostly sold as a toy, Silly Putty was discovered after mixing boric acid with silicone oil during World War II in an attempt to find a rubber substitute.
Here is an affordable version of this device:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Flow Ring
The original version is available here:
From Amazon: BUY NOW Toroflux
Get one and flow with it!
From Art of Play: BUY NOW
The Toroflux
Why does it look like a bubble when moving fast? Wikipedia has the details: when the object exceeds a certain speed the flicker fusion frequency of our vision produces the bubble illusion.
The physics of the toroflux is wonderfully illustrated and explained in this article by Daniel Walsh.
Toroflux: kinetic art toy made from a single continuous loop of stainless steel band. The band of spring metal is woven such that it forms a torus that can clamp on to and roll down a stick, segment of tubing, or even an arm. Amazing combination of math and kinetic art invented by Jochen Valett.
Get one here! Chose your color scheme and length, all come with the special motor and operating instructions:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW: Dancing Helix
The Dancing Helix: This kinetic mobile's mesmerizing motion arises from pulsed torsion waves that propagate up and down the length of a series of weighed rods connected by an elastic ribbon (which acts as a torsion spring). The waves arise by a special pulsed motor from which the strand hangs, and only spins for a second or so out of each minute. The twisting waves then constructively and deconstructively interfere creating an array of flowing motions.
Get the kit here:
From Educational Innovations: BUY NOW Polydensity Bottle Kit
Folow the link above for details of the physics explanation.
Poly Density Puzzle: my favorite science brain teaser- white beads and blue beads "float" oddly separated beneath the surface of a clear liquid. If the contents are mixed by shaking the container, the white beads gather at the top and the blue sink to bottom! Adding to the mystery; after about 30 seconds the two layers of beads will have slowly moved back to the middle. What is your guess as to the physics behind this behavior?