Experiments

Basic level laboratory 

Suited to students on a middle school level or on first years of secondary level

• G - Falling body: Allows a user to throw a ball up in the air and measure its height as it bounces back down. The value of acceleration of gravity may then be calculated and students may realize the quadratic nature of the balls' fall. 

• Scuba: Study of the pressure variation with depth in four different fluids. One more three meter high Scuba apparatus will soon be assembled at Sintra's Ciência Viva Portuguese science center. 

• PV – Boyle Mariotte: Analysis of the Boyle-Mariotte law: inverse proportionality between the variation of volume and pressure. One extra experiment is also assembled at Lisbon's middle and secondary school Padre António Vieira.

• Dices Statistics: This experiment consists of an automatic system to throw six-sided dices. To count the number of spots, the data is analysed by the automatic analysis of the captured image. The collected data allows to study the probability law.

• Pendulum: A pendulum is launched with user selectable values for the rod length and the initial oscillation angle.

• World Pendulum: The main objective in this distributed experiment system is to oscillate a sufficiently accurate pendulum to determine the gravity acceleration - g. Through a constellation of pendulums placed in different locations around the world it's possible to compare the value of g in different latitudes. Currently there are three deployed experiments: at Calouste Gulbenkian Planetarium, Lisbon; at Algarve's  Ciência Viva science center; at University of Santa Cruz, Ilhéus, Brazil. 

• Colisione Collision between two bodies & conservation of the Inertia Momentum. The purpose of this experiment is to teach the concepts of referential, center of mass and conservation of linear momentum. To this end, two cars are launched and colide and their speeds are recorded during the entire process. This apparatus is assembled at Benedita's Cooperative middle and secondary school, Benedita, Portugal.

Intermediate level laboratory 

Suited to students on a secondary level or on the first year of college

• Optics: A laser is focused in an acrylic semicircle, allowing for the measurement of the final intensity as well as the different angles for both the resulting reflected and refracted beams.

• Radiare: From a radioactive source, it is possible to measure the transmission of radiation through various materials. This experiment also allows the determination of the half-life time of the radioactive material being used.

• Heat Conduction: The purpose of this experiment is to study the heat conduction, comparing the speed of heat propagation in three metal bars of different substances: copper, brass and iron.

• Inertia Disks: Acknowledgement of the conservation of the angular momentum. Colliding a rotating disk with another that is initially at rest, it's possible to infer the momentum of inertia through principles of energy conservation.

• Polaroid: In this experiment a light from an incoherent source (white LED) is polarized using a polaroid lens allowing to study the efect of second polarizer over this beam, by measuring the incident power at the end with a photocell and by varying the angle between the polarizers.

Advanced level laboratory 

Suited to students on a universitary level:

• StatSound – Sound Speed: A soud wave propagates inside a cylindrical tube. Along the tube there are several microphones distributed to capture the sound's intensity. The sound wave propagation in air is observable. It also makes it possible to observe the change of the sound's intensity as it propagates and is reflected at the end of the tube generating interference patterns.

• Cylindrical Capacitor: Consists of an electrical capacitor in which one can measure the electrical capacity and determine the dielectric constant of the dielectric material being used.

• Gamma: Relation between specific heats of air at constant pressure and constant volume - index gamma for air. For this purpose the adiabatic oscillations of a piston inside a cylinder whose dimensions are known are used.

• Planck's experiment: Allows the study of the photoelectric effect and the determination of Planck's constant, by using five LEDs of different colors, with adjustable intensity which focus on a photocell

• Langmuir's probe: An electric probe, the Langmuir's probe, allows to determine some key features of three different types of plasmas. Measuring the probe's relationship between the polarization voltage and the respective collected current one can determine the electron temperature and density of the plasma. This experiment was made available in cooperation with the Eindhoven University of Technology under the FuseNet project.