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What would life be like if there was no friction? Our newest exhibits
aim to tackle this very question. You can come along and have fun
playing with Friction free and Feel the friction which
use pucks to help us understand how friction affects our everyday
lives. What is a puck? Well you’ll see one bashed around in an ice
hockey game. Now our new exhibits don’t use ice but……air!
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Friction free is a big flat surface
with lots of tiny holes in it. A fan blows air up through these holes
and onto the table forming a thin cushion of air upon which the pucks
float. The lack of friction between the pucks and the surface of the
table means that when you push them, they glide around for ages and
ages, bouncing off the edges of the table and each other. |
Friction free |
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Feel the
friction |
However, what happens when friction rears
its head? The second exhibit, Feel the friction, lets you look
at the effects of different levels of friction. Each of four tracks
has a different surface along which the pucks are fired, and only one
track uses the cushion of air. Which puck will stop first? Which one
will glide to victory? |
Funded by the Gatsby Charitable
Foundation, this exciting new pilot project is called
Naturally
Newton as it focuses on Newton's three laws of motion. We are also
developing workshops in which 11 – 18 year old students can use these
exhibits to investigate Newtonian science.
A lot of people learn Newton's laws at school – can
you remember something about action and reaction? – but they are
difficult to apply in the real world because we always experience
friction. When Newton was working on the laws he always worked with
the premise of a frictionless environment – something we rarely
encounter on Earth.
Isaac Newton is known for many things. However he is
perhaps most famous for developing the idea that gravity is a
universal force, for inventing a type of mathematics called calculus
and for working out that white light from the sun is the combination
of all the colours of the rainbow. His mother lived in Woolsthorpe
Manor and it was here that the famous apple fell out of the tree. It
is unlikely that the apple landed on Newton's head, as legend has it,
but it seems it did inspire him to think that Earth's gravity was
sufficient to pull the moon round and round our planet. Come and join
the crowds gravitating around our new exhibits in Explore!
To learn more about Newton
click here
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