In the matter of physics the first lessons should contain nothing but what is experimental and interesting to see. A pretty experiment is in itself often more valuable than twenty formulae extracted from our minds. (Albert Einstein)

1^st Movement: Physics and Sound

1. Tuning fork waves. Micklavzina
Place a large vibrating tuning fork into a clear container of water and the waves can be seen by placing the container on an overhead projector.

2. People Wave Demonstration with Glow Sticks. Micklavzina
Glow sticks are available from many vendors in the U.S. Perhaps a web search in your area will come up with some results. One source for these sticks and other interesting items available for purchase in the U.S. is Educational Innovations¹.

3. Waves on a rope. Micklavzina
The Lycra Rope is made from Lycra, which is a fabric that stretches in two dimensions. I bought a whole bolt so I could have one very long piece. It makes very nice waves and traveling wave pulses for large audiences.

4. Straw and Scissors. Micklavzina & Planinsic
Flatten on end of the straw and then cut the end into a point. Blow through the straw and once you get a sound you can change the pitch by cutting the straw into shorter lengths. You can also show the pitch changes due to a length of a string using a guitar or other stringed instruments.

5. Wine Glass Waves. Planinsic
You can see the wave patterns made by a wine glass utilizing an overhead projector. The crucial part is finding the correct shape of glass. The glass needs to be semicircular, not curving in at the top as most wine glasses do. The glass is supported by mounting it onto a piece of clear Plexiglas. The water and glass is itself a lens. To get an image on from the overhead, you must take out the Fresnel lens located below the stage glass.

6. Cosmic Transducer (Resonance) Micklavzina
Pendulums of small mass, such as a ping pong ball, of different lengths hang from a stick. Try and get the balls to move with very slight movements of you hand. You can later exaggerate the motion so the audience can see how the trick is done and explain resonance.

7. Tubes or pipes that make sound after they have been heated. Micklavzina
The pipe has screen mesh located at about 0.1*L to 0.15*L where L is the length of the pipe. A stacked screen mesh will work best. You can adjust the placement for best results. If the placement is correct, the tube will make no sound when heated and makes sound a few seconds after the heat is removed. A Bunsen burner works well for the heat source. The long pipe was about 0.12 m diameter and 1.7m long.

2^nd Movement Light and Color

1. Persistence of Vision Micklavzina
Strobe FX toy it may be available in Europe someday. Try doing a web search. You can also use a moving laser beam.

2. Rotating Color Apparatus Planinsic
A narrow beam of white light from a slide projector passes through rotating color filters (in my case 12 sectors in sequence RGBRGB...). The light beam than reflects from a small rotating mirror producing a colored spot on the screen. Rotation of the mirror drives the bright spot on the screen in the circle and rotation of the color filter changes the color of the spot. Because of the persistence of vision the rotating spot is perceived as a bright circle. If one rotating frequency is kept fixed and the other is slowly changed, nice colored bands will appear along the circle at certain ratios of the two rotating frequencies. 'New' colors such as yellow; magenta and cyan can be observed as a result of additive color mixing.

3. Color mixing ping-pong balls Planinsic
Ping-pong ball can work as a very good light mixer. An ideal light sources for this purpose are colored LEDs (I used red and green LEDs from Kingbright and blue LED from Nichia) ...but only after the following modification. Using a hacksaw carefully saw off the part of the LED body that makes the lens. Make three holes in a ping-pong ball and push the LEDs into the ball. Using switches and potentiometers allow you to control the brightness of individual LED and adjust different color shades of resultant color of the ball. (This and more sent for publication in The Physics Teacher).

4. Filters and Ping Pong Balls Planinsic
The sensation of yellow color in our eyes can be obtained by adding red and green light. This can be nicely shown using the color mixer described above. Make another pink-pong ball with three yellow LEDs in it following the instructions above. Adjust the currents through the red and green LED so that the two yellow glowing balls look the same. Now put the green filter over the balls and observe the change in ball colors. The yellow LEDs become dark and the green red mixing LEDs appear green. The sensation of yellow appears when the red and green cones are about equally stimulated. This can be done in two ways: either by the mixture of red and green light or by the light of which wavelength falls between the red and green i.e. by the 'proper' yellow light. (This and more sent for publication in TPT).

3^rd Movement Transcendental Physics and 4th Movement: The light you cannot see

1. Extra Sensory Perception trick and observations in the infrared. Micklavzina
A small black and white “spy” camera has infrared light emitting diodes on the camera. This makes a spotlight that is invisible to our eyes. In the US These are available from Supercircuits². The one I used is Item #: PC170IR. I also used a plastic filter that blocks visible light but passes IR. Filters can be purchased from a plastics distributor or an electronics distributor (panel displays) such as ELPHA electronics. Place playing cards behind the plastic and observe the image on the monitor. What happens when you put a red card under the plastic? (The final result depends upon the color of the ink. Try playing card decks from different manufacturers.) If you do not have the playing cards, put paper with text of various colors. Some red text will also not be visible. You may also find that some blue text will disappear! It depends on the ink’s capability to absorb infrared.

Finale: Making music. (Palm Pipes)³: Micklavzina
The pipes are made from 250mm diameter plastic electrical conduit pipe. Other diameters of pipe will also work. You can purchase the pipes at a building materials store or electrical supply store. Cut the pipes with a saw and identify the note of the pipes with colored tape. You can find the colored tape at electrical suppliers or at a stationary or office supply store. You can also use strips of colored paper and attach with clear tape instead of using the colored tape.

Palm pipe color, lengths and associated notes.

Vous Dirais-Je Maman W.A.Mozart

White White Green Green Blue Blue Green

Yellow Yellow Orange Orange Red Red White

Green Green Yellow Yellow Orange Orange Red

Green Green Yellow Yellow Orange Orange Red

White White Green Green Blue Blue Green

Yellow Yellow Orange Orange Red Red White

¹ Education Innovations http://www.teachersource.com/
² IR Camera Supercircuits: http://www.supercircuits.com/STORE/products.asp?dept=70
³ Acknowledgement to Brian Jones, Colorado State University, Fort Collins Colorado USA