• Question: what is your favourite experiment to do @all

    Asked by Sam Ellie Jasmine to Hannah, Lucy, Phil, rochellevelho, Stephen on 10 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Lucy Kissick

      Lucy Kissick answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      The Urey-Miller experiment involves putting all the gases known to exist on Earth several billion years ago in a container, then striking this container with electricity. This simulates the atmosphere on a young Earth being struck with lightning. After a few days, the gases in the container have changed into weird chemicals and things called amino acids, which are the building blocks from which life is made. The experiment was the first time scientists (Dr Urey and Dr Miller) demonstrated that Earth had all the bits required for life to evolve very early in its history.

      I’ve never personally done this experiment, but you can watch videos of the outcome on YouTube.

    • Photo: Phil Sutton

      Phil Sutton answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      A interesting experiment to show the power of the atmosphere pushing on us all the time can be demonstrated by Magdeburg hemispheres. here you pump out the air between two half spheres. Try pulling them apart, its impossible. They stuck to each other so tight that you wont be able to move them apart. The only thing holding these together is the air around us pushing down. On other planets with bigger atmospheres this force would be greater. In space what do you think might happen….?

      Also I got in a lot of trouble for experimenting with angular momentum with my 2 year old son on a roundabout. Basically we both sat on the roundabout and I was at the outside leaning out. As it turned it has a certain angular momentum but as I moved inwards it would speed up to conserve angular momentum. My son would giggle and laugh his head off lots. We both fell off a few times………

    • Photo: Hannah Sargeant

      Hannah Sargeant answered on 12 Mar 2017:

      My favourite experiment is the hammer and the feather experiment. On Earth, if you drop a hammer and a feather at the same time, the hammer will hit the ground first. This is not because the hammer weighs more. In physics there is a rule which says that the mass of an object is not important when it is falling. This was proven on the Moon! An astronaut dropped a feather and hammer and they both hit the floor at the same time! The reason this happens is because on the Moon there is no air, so there is no air resistance on the feather. On the Earth there is an atmosphere so it is air resistance that slows the feather down.

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