PHYSICAL

SCIENCES

MAGAZINE

LABORATORY TIPS
Using a cardboard Box inverted over a ray box and prism or lens to illustrate refraction in the absence of a darkened room

The refracted light from a ray box may be seen effectively when housed with a cardboard box turned upside down. An opening should be cut on the top of the box for viewing.

This is also effective when using mirrors, diffraction gratings and filters for primary and secondary colours. The opposite side of the cardboard box to the side with the ray box can be lined with paper which can act as a screen.

Using water as an optical fibre

A water beam can be used to illustrate total internal reflection and pipe light around a curve from a laser. Three quarter fill a two litre plastic bottle of water and pierce a hole on the surface of the bottle along the path of the laser light. If the bottle is corked the beam of water will reduce and eventually stop. The water beam along the laser light is controlled by either loosening the cork slowly whereby it will flow again or indeed changing the pressure by pressing on the bottle while the cork is closed. This is illustrated in the diagram. A better view of the beam will be seen through the bottle if a little milk (two or three drops) is added to the water.
Michael Fitzgerald, Scoil Mhuire & de, Newcastle West, Co Limerick

Newtons Disk Demonstration

I tried on numerous occasions to use Newton s Disk to illustrate to students how a mixture of colours can be used to produce white light. However, I was never able to do this convincingly so I decided to try an alternative .The problem I found with the manual version was due to the insufficient speed that one can turn the disk. I tried, the use of a simple fan to see the effect of applying greater speed to the disk. This method illustrates much more convincingly how white light can be produced using the three primary colours. Simply cut out each of the three primary colours and sellotape them to fan as shown in Fig. 1. The results are illustrated in Fig. 2.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Patrick Lyne, Mercy Secondary School, Mounthawk, Tralee, Co. Kerry

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