In school physics lessons, teachers always say that physical phenomena are everywhere in our lives. We just often forget about it. Meanwhile, the amazing is near! Do not think that you will need something supernatural to organize physical experiments at home. And here's some evidence for you ;)

magnetic pencil

What needs to be prepared?

• battery.
• Thick pencil.
• Copper insulated wire with a diameter of 0.2-0.3 mm and a length of several meters (the more the better).
• Scotch.

Conducting experience

Wind the wire tightly turn to turn on the pencil, not reaching its edges by 1 cm. One row has ended - wind the other one from above in the opposite direction. And so on, until all the wire is finished. Do not forget to leave two ends of the wire 8–10 cm each free. To prevent the turns from unwinding after winding, secure them with tape. Strip the free ends of the wire and connect them to the battery contacts.

What happened?

Got a magnet! Try to bring small iron objects to it - a paper clip, a hairpin. Are attracted!

Lord of the water

What needs to be prepared?

• A stick made of plexiglass (for example, a student's ruler or an ordinary plastic comb).
• A dry cloth made of silk or wool (for example, a wool sweater).

Conducting experience

Open the faucet so that a thin stream of water flows. Rub the stick or comb vigorously on the prepared cloth. Quickly bring the wand close to the stream of water without touching it.

What will happen?

A jet of water will be bent by an arc, being attracted to the stick. Try the same with two sticks and see what happens.

spinning top

What needs to be prepared?

• Paper, needle and eraser.
• A stick and a dry woolen cloth from a previous experience.

Conducting experience

You can manage not only water! Cut a strip of paper 1-2 cm wide and 10-15 cm long, bend along the edges and in the middle, as shown in the figure. Insert the needle with the pointed end into the eraser. Balance the workpiece-top on the needle. Prepare a "magic wand", rub it on a dry cloth and bring it to one of the ends of the paper strip from the side or top, without touching it.

What will happen?

The strip will swing up and down like a swing, or it will spin like a carousel. And if you can cut a butterfly out of thin paper, then the experience will be even more interesting.

Ice and fire

(the experiment is carried out on a sunny day)

What needs to be prepared?

• A small cup with a round bottom.
• A piece of dry paper.

Conducting experience

Pour into a cup of water and place in the freezer. When the water turns to ice, remove the cup and place it in a bowl of hot water. After a while, the ice will separate from the cup. Now go out to the balcony, put a piece of paper on the stone floor of the balcony. With a piece of ice, focus the sun on a piece of paper.

What will happen?

The paper should be charred, because in the hands it is no longer just ice ... Did you guess that you made a magnifying glass?

Wrong mirror

What needs to be prepared?

• Transparent jar with a tight-fitting lid.
• Mirror.

Conducting experience

Pour excess water into a jar and close the lid to prevent air bubbles from getting inside. Place the jar upside down on a mirror. Now you can look in the mirror.

Zoom in on your face and look inside. There will be a thumbnail. Now start tilting the jar to the side without lifting it from the mirror.

What will happen?

The reflection of your head in the jar, of course, will also tilt until it is turned upside down, while the legs will not be visible. Pick up the jar and the reflection will flip again.

Bubble Cocktail

What needs to be prepared?

• A glass of strong salt solution.
• Battery from a flashlight.
• Two pieces of copper wire about 10 cm long.
• Fine sandpaper.

Conducting experience

Clean the ends of the wire with fine sandpaper. Connect one end of the wires to each pole of the battery. Dip the free ends of the wires into a glass of solution.

What happened?

Bubbles will rise near the lowered ends of the wire.

Lemon battery

What needs to be prepared?

• Lemon, thoroughly washed and wiped dry.
• Two pieces of insulated copper wire approximately 0.2–0.5 mm thick and 10 cm long.
• Steel paper clip.
• Bulb from a flashlight.

Conducting experience

Strip the opposite ends of both wires at a distance of 2-3 cm. Insert a paper clip into the lemon, screw the end of one of the wires to it. Insert the end of the second wire into the lemon 1-1.5 cm from the paper clip. To do this, first pierce the lemon in this place with a needle. Take the two free ends of the wires and attach the bulbs to the contacts.

What will happen?

The lamp will light up!

There are many legends about outstanding scientists and inventors, emphasizing their eccentricity, the unusualness of discoveries and the unexpected twists and turns of fate. Below, in chronological order, are 10 of the lives of prominent scientists who, thanks to their discoveries and scientific achievements, have received worldwide fame.

The most interesting facts, legends, speculation and gossip

According to information recently "declassified" on the Christian Internet resource "Megaportal", a British scientist, the founder of the mathematical foundations of natural philosophy Isaac Newton(Isaac Newton), being a deeply religious man, devoted most of his life to the rational interpretation of the Bible. In the records relating to 1700, he gives a transcript of " Revelations of John the Evangelist”, from which it is clear that the date of the beginning of the Apocalypse is 2060. Having studied the Old Testament, the scientist restored the exact dimensions of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

Around the same time, the German alchemist Hennig Brand(Hennig Brand), like most of his "colleagues", was looking for the philosopher's stone. He used human urine as the starting material. After numerous chemical experiments and physical effects in the form of evaporation, calcination and grinding, the scientist obtained a white powder that glows in the dark, which today is explained by the content of phosphorus in it, the concentration of which was significantly increased during chemical transformations. Brand dubbed him "the light-bearer" and, deciding that the powder belongs to the primary matter, he tried to transform it into gold. After nothing came of this idea, the scientist began to trade in the powder itself, selling the luminous substance at a much higher price than the gold-bearing one. An equally interesting story is connected with phosphorus, which happened to the Soviet chemist, academician Semyon Isaakovich Vol'fkovich. Creating phosphate mineral fertilizers, the scientist in his laboratory was exposed to phosphorus fumes, which soaked his clothes, raincoat and hat. When he returned home on foot, taking exercise through the dark streets, a glow emanated from his robes, which gave rise to rumors among Muscovites about the appearance of a "luminous monk."

Russian academician Mikhailo Vasilievich Lomonosov, who came from Pomor fishermen, was distinguished by fair health and physical strength. Already in adulthood, being in high academic ranks, he, in a good drink, walked around Vasilyevsky Island. He met three sailors who, seeing a drunken man, decided to rob him. However, this attempt ended tragicomically - the first sailor was beaten unconscious, the second ran away, and the third pundit himself decided to rob. He took off the sailor's ports, jacket and camisole, and then, tying all this ammunition into a bundle, he took it to his home. After the death of Mikhail Lomonosov, all his lifetime notes, sketches and drawings mysteriously disappeared from the library of the former favorite of Catherine the Great, Grigory Orlov, where they were kept by the highest command.

Few people know that the English traveler, ornithologist and naturalist Charles Darwin(Charles Darwin) one of the methods of studying birds considered them to be tasted. Joining the London gourmet club, Darwin ate dishes prepared from the great marsh bittern, sparrow hawk and other inedible and inedible birds, as a result of which the ornithologist came to the conclusion that Robinson Crusoe was not afraid of starvation. However, after the guests were treated to a roast of an old owl in the club, the scientist vomited for a long time, and he ceased his membership in the gourmet society. But Ch. Darwin did not lose his addiction to exotic dishes and described in great detail the taste sensations when eating dishes from rare animals that the ship's cook prepared for him while sailing on the Beagle brig. He not only ate variously prepared dishes of agouti, Galapagos tortoise and rhea ostrich, but also ventured to taste a roast of an armadillo and a South American mountain lion - cougar. Summarizing his gourmet experience, Charles Darwin noted that the variety of meat dishes prepared from the most unusual animals and birds awakened in him the instincts of a predator.

The world's first female professor of mathematics Sofia Vasilievna Kovalevskaya she dreamed of getting a higher education, but the Bestuzhev courses that existed in Russia in those years did not give such an opportunity, and to study abroad at European universities, written permission from her father or husband was required. Her father, lieutenant general of artillery, considered higher education "not a woman's business" and was categorically against her daughter's foreign voyage. Sofya Korvin-Krukovskaya was forced to enter into a fictitious marriage with a young geologist, the founder of the school of evolutionary paleontology, Vladimir Onufrievich Kovalevsky. The husband graciously gave permission to study. However, the fictitiousness of marriage did not prevent the birth and development of tender feelings, and the couple had a daughter, Sophia.

Receiving primary education, deeply religious Albert Einstein(Albert Einstein) became famous among teachers and classmates as a loser who was not given the exact sciences. However, after entering the gymnasium, he rethought his views by reading Euclidean's Elements and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Unfortunately, this did not help him get a certificate of completion of six classes of the gymnasium and enter the Zurich Polytechnic School. Since then, Albert has treated any cramming with contempt, believing that knowledge is rethought and fixed in the brain with the help of some kind of “insight”. Apparently, these factors affected the attitude of the discoverer of the theory of relativity to teaching. As the scientist himself recalls with humor, by the end of his first lecture there were only three people left in the audience.

Professor at the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia) Thomas Parnell(Thomas Parnell) became widely known for staging the longest experiment in the history of physical chemistry. After repeated disputes about whether bitumen is a liquid or a solid, in 1927 the professor sealed a measured dose of coal tar pitch in a funnel. The first drop at room temperature fell after 8 years. The experiment continues to the present - in 2000, the eighth drop formed and fell, after which Parnell's experiment was entered in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest experiment in the history of physics, and the professor himself in 2005, posthumously, was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize. Contemporary scientists joked about T. Parnell that he, following in the footsteps of Isaac Newton, studying the Bible, determined the ambient temperature in hell, which is + 718 ° С.

Interesting facts from the life of physicists

Physicists became famous for the most interesting facts, statements and incidents in their lives.

After the discovery by the German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen(Wilhelm Röntgen) "X"-rays, later named after the inventor, Germany was filled with rumors about their healing and power. At that time W. Roentgen taught at the University of Vienna, and one day he received an order from the Austrian police with a prohibition "up to a special order" to deal with "X"-rays. Later, the scientist received a request to send several rays by mail and instructions on how to use them to illuminate the chest. Referring to the bulkiness of the equipment, Roentgen came out with a counter proposal - to send a chest for lung diagnostics.

British physicist Ernest Reserford(Ernest Rutherford) answered one of his envious, who reproached the scientist that the latter is always on the crest of a physical wave - "... how could it be otherwise, if I raised this wave."

Soviet physicist Lev Davidovich Landau He was known among his contemporaries not so much for his theoretical calculations in the field of quantum physics, but for the "theory of happiness" developed by him with his own hand. Marriage, he considered a cooperative, very far from true, sublime love, in which everything should be common and accessible to outsiders. True, the physicist extended this accessibility not so much to his wives and lovers, but to himself. The main postulate of this theory was the "non-aggression pact", which prohibited the jealousy of one of the spouses for the betrayal of the other.

These are 10 from the life of outstanding scientists who became famous not only for their eccentricities, outrageousness and originality of thinking, but also made a huge contribution to the development of science.

As a rule, few of the students love the school science of natural science about the properties and structure of matter. And indeed - tedious problem solving, complex formulas, incomprehensible combinations of special characters, etc. In general, continuous gloom and melancholy. If you think so, then this article is definitely for you.

In the article we will tell the most interesting facts about physics, which will make even a person indifferent to it look at natural science in a different way. Without a doubt, physics is a very useful and interesting science, and there are a lot of interesting facts about the Universe related to it.

1. Why is the sun red in the morning and evening? A wonderful example of a fact from physical phenomena in nature. In fact, the light of a hot celestial body is white. The white glow with its spectral change tends to acquire all the colors of the rainbow for itself.

In the mornings and evenings, the sun's rays pass through numerous atmospheric layers. Air molecules and the smallest dry dust particles are able to delay the passage of sunlight, best of all passing only red rays through them.

2. Why does time tend to stop at the speed of light? If you believe the general theory of relativity proposed, the absolute value of the speed of propagation of electromagnetic waves in a vacuum medium is unchanged and equals three hundred million meters per second. In fact, this is a unique phenomenon, given that nothing in our universe can exceed the speed of light, however, this is still a theoretical opinion.

In one of the theories, authored by Einstein, there is an interesting section that says that the more you gain speed, the slower time starts to move in comparison with the surrounding objects. For example, if you drive a car for an hour, you will age a little less than if you just lay on your bed at home watching television programs. Nanoseconds are unlikely to significantly affect your life, but the proven fact remains.

3. Why does a bird sitting on an electric wire not die from a current discharge? A bird sitting on a power line is not subjected to electric shock because its body has insufficient conductivity. In places where the bird comes into contact with the wire, a so-called parallel connection is created, and since. high-voltage wire is the best conductor of current, only a minimum power current moves through the body of the bird itself, which is not able to cause significant harm to the health of the bird.

But as soon as a vertebrate animal covered with feathers and down, standing on a wire, comes into contact with a grounded object, for example, with a metal part of a high-voltage power line, it instantly burns out, because the resistance in this case becomes too great, and all the electric current pierces the body of the unfortunate bird.

4. How much dark matter is there in the Universe? We live in the material world, and all that we can see around is matter. We have the opportunity to touch it by touch, sell it, buy it, we can dispose of matter at our discretion. However, in the Universe there is not only an objective reality in the form of matter, but also dark matter (physicists often talk about it as a “dark horse”) - this is a kind of matter that does not tend to emit electromagnetic waves and interact with them.

For obvious reasons, no one has been able to see or touch dark matter. Scientists have come to the conclusion that it is present in the universe, more than once observing indirect evidence of its existence. It is generally accepted that its share in the composition of the Universe is 22%, while the matter familiar to us takes only 5%.

5. Are there earth-like planets in the Universe? Surely they exist! Taking into account the scale of the Universe, the probability of this is estimated by scientists quite high.

However, only recently, scientists from NASA began to actively discover such planets, located no further than 50 light-years from the Sun, called exoplanets. Exoplanets are terrestrial planets that revolve around the axis of other stars. To date, more than 3,500 terrestrial planets have been found, and scientists are discovering alternative places for the existence of people more and more often.

6. All items fall at the same speed. It may seem to some that objects with a large weight fall down much faster than light ones - this is a completely logical assumption. Surely a hockey puck falls at a much faster rate than a bird's feather. In fact, this is so, but not through the fault of universal gravitation - the main reason due to which we can observe this is that the gaseous shell surrounding the planet provides powerful resistance.

It has been 400 years since I first realized that universal gravitation applies to all objects equally, regardless of their gravity. If you had the opportunity to repeat the experiment with a hockey puck and a bird's feather in space (where there is no atmospheric pressure), they would fall down at the same speed.

7. How does the northern lights appear on Earth? Throughout their existence, people have watched one of the natural wonders of our planet - the northern lights, but at the same time they could not understand what it is and where it comes from. Ancient people, for example, had their own idea: a group of indigenous Eskimo peoples believed that this was a sacred light that radiated from the souls of deceased people, and in ancient European countries it was assumed that these were military operations that the defenders of their state who died in wars were eternally doomed to wage .

The first scientists came closer to unraveling the mysterious phenomenon - they put forward the theory for worldwide discussion that the glow arises as a result of the reflection of light rays from ice blocks. Modern researchers believe that the multi-colored light is provoked by the collision of millions of atoms and dust particles from our atmospheric shell. The fact that the phenomenon is widespread mainly at the poles is explained by the fact that in these regions the power of the Earth's magnetic field is especially strong.

8. Deep-sucking quicksand. The force of pulling a stuck leg out of the sands, supersaturated with air and moisture from ascending sources, at a speed of 0.1 m / s, is equal to the force of lifting an average passenger car. A noteworthy fact: quicksand refers to a non-Newtonian fluid, which is not able to absorb the human body in its entirety.

Therefore, people mired in quicksand die from exhaustion or dehydration, excessive ultraviolet radiation, or for other reasons. God forbid, you are in such a situation, it is worth remembering that it is strictly forbidden to make sudden movements. Try to tilt your body back as high as possible, spread your arms wide and wait for the rescue team to help.

9. Why is the unit of measure for the strength of alcoholic beverages and temperature called the same - a degree? In the 17th-18th centuries, the generally accepted scientific principle of caloric was in effect - the so-called weightless matter, which was in physical bodies and was the cause of thermal phenomena.

According to this principle, more heated physical bodies contain many times more concentrated caloric than less heated ones, so the strength of alcoholic beverages was determined as the temperature of a mixture of substance and caloric.

10. Why doesn't a raindrop kill a mosquito? Physicists have managed to figure out how mosquitoes manage to fly in rainy weather and why raindrops do not kill bloodsuckers. The size of insects is the same as the size of a raindrop, only one droplet weighs 50 times more than a mosquito. The impact of a drop can be equated to a car or even a bus crashing into a human body.

Despite this, the rain does not disturb the insects. The question arises - why? The speed of a raindrop is about 9 meters per second. When an insect enters the shell of a drop, enormous pressure acts on it. For example, if a person were subjected to such pressure, his body would not have survived, but the mosquito is able to safely withstand such loads due to the specific structure of the skeleton. And in order to continue flying in a given direction, a mosquito just needs to shake off its hairs from a drop of rain.

Scientists say that the volume of the drop is enough to kill a mosquito if it is on the ground. And they attribute the absence of consequences after a raindrop hits a mosquito with the fact that the movement associated with the drop makes it possible to minimize the transfer of energy to the insect.

In this science there is still an unlimited number of facts. And if the scientists known today were not fond of physics, we would not know all the interesting things that are happening around us. Achievements of famous physicists have allowed us to understand the importance of substantiating the laws-prohibitions, laws-statements and absolute laws for the life of mankind.

Physics translated from ancient Greek - "nature". Physics is a field of natural science, a science that studies the most fundamental patterns that determine the general structure and evolution of the material world. Being one of the three whales on which the modern system of the world order is based, physics is the science of nature in the broadest sense of the word! In addition to studying the material and energy parameters of the organization of the universe, she also sets herself the task of explaining and logically substantiating the fundamental interactions in nature that control the movement of matter.

In fact, it is physics that is the main engine of the technological progress of mankind as a whole. Without belittling the merits of other branches of scientific thought in this, I still want to mention such greatest geniuses of the human race as Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, etc., etc. It was physicists who allowed humanity to take not just a step in the direction of its technical development but take a giant leap!!!

Over the past 100 years, man has mastered the energy of the atom, introduced electricity everywhere in all spheres of life, created something without which you could not read these lines - the Internet, conquered air, water and began to explore the underwater space of our planet. He created super-strong materials with properties unprecedented in the village, computers that perform billions of logical operations per second, penetrated the endless depths of the human brain, saw the smallest inhabitants of our planet, which we now call viruses, learned how to artificially grow and transplant human organs and escaped outside the earth's atmosphere. Do not count everything. But even this, I think, is enough to fully understand what physical science is.

The question may arise - why do you need physics? Let us answer it again with the same question - why do centipedes need legs, birds have wings, and plants need the sun? That's right, - yes, because they can't do without all this !!! :) Today we need physics more than ever before. After all, you use the laws of physics every day, in your daily life ... - when you cook, watch TV or just soak in the bathroom. The laws of Archimedes, the laws applied in optics, or the physical laws from the section of hydro-gas-dynamics have become something so ordinary for us that we simply don’t pay attention to them, but in vain ... Physics is, first of all, the ability of a person to know the world around him as deeply as possible, to streamline the system of his worldview and to realize himself as an integral part of it!

Physical science is comprehensive in its desire to cover as much as possible and to describe in as much detail as possible what falls into the field of view of its apologists, and therefore it can rightfully claim the honorary title of queen of sciences!

We all heard a lot about them in school. Thanks to the brilliant minds of the world's greatest physicists, humanity has a telephone, electric light, an understanding of the laws of the universe. We studied their theories and principles, inventions and discoveries, their successes and achievements in dry paragraphs in textbooks. But brilliant physicists are also people, with their own characteristics and quirks.

Newton: alchemy or physics

Not all of Isaac Newton's scientific discoveries have stood the test of time as well as the law of gravity. For example, he devoted many hours to alchemy. In fact, he was so interested in it that nowadays alchemy is considered his main focus, and real science was nothing more than a pastime. Unlike mathematics and physics, Newton does not even try to add new knowledge to alchemy, preferring instead to deal with the theories put forward before him. As an alchemist, he was mainly absorbed in creating the Philosopher's Stone, which can turn other metals into gold and grant immortality to humans. After his death, research revealed that he suffered from chronic mercury, arsenic, and lead poisoning, proving his fondness for alchemy.

Einstein: difficulty of speech of the great scientist

As a child, Albert Einstein spoke very slowly. Until the age of 5, his speech was slurred, the child needed some time to form all the words into sentences, and then speak at once in one breath. Albert's parents were concerned, believing that he might be suffering from retardation.

This is not the only case when future scientists had problems with speech and diction in childhood. This developmental speech disorder was later called Einstein's syndrome by psychologists.

Edison: a strange invention - a concrete house

Thomas Edison at one time tried to get into the cement business. For this, he planned to solve the housing problem of New York. Edison envisioned building a house by pouring cement into a single mold. There were also provided molds of various shapes for windows, stairs, bathtubs. But in practice, the idea turned out to be unrealistic, and Edison abandoned this idea, although he built one concrete house for himself. He even created a concrete piano and concrete furniture, but this know-how did not attract people.

Pauli: mysticism and science

Do you know someone who can destroy electrical equipment just by being in the same room with them? Wolfgang Pauli was one such person. According to the stories, when the theoretical physicist entered the room, the laboratory equipment simply failed to work. His friend Otto Stern effectively banned Pauli from entering his laboratory. The scientist himself believed in this peculiarity of his. Pauli believed that mind and matter are interconnected, that human consciousness can influence the external world. Thus, the physicist considered himself a psychokineticist.

Galileo: persecution of the Church and recognition after death

The struggle against the Roman Catholic Church forced Galileo Galilei to face trials. The church found him guilty of disseminating unethical and false information in society. He was imprisoned and forced to vilify his own research and theories. All of Galileo's work was banned from publication.

Almost four hundred years after his death, the Roman Catholic Church realized the mistake made several centuries ago. She even apologized for it. In 2008, it was decided to place a statue of Galileo in the Vatican.

Tesla: obsessive thoughts

Nikola Tesla filed over 300 different patents, including on designs for radio, AC motor and electromagnets. But according to contemporaries, he, like no one else, corresponded to the stereotypical image of a mad scientist. It all started with his interesting quirk - to start work at 3:00 in the morning, often staying up until 11:00. After an illness at the age of 25, Tesla continued his strict regimen for another 38 years, adding other oddities to it. For example, he came to hate jewelry of all kinds, but especially pearls, and felt a similar distaste for the presence of overweight women.

Pierre Curie: Science and the Supernatural

Pierre Curie, physicist and husband of Marie Skłodowska-Curie, had a very deep interest in mediums. In particular, he was friendly with Eusapia Palladino, an Italian female medium who claimed to be able to move tables with her mind and communicate with spirits. Curie attended séances and was amazed that he could not find any evidence of the deception.

A few days before his death in 1906, Pierre wrote to a friend about his last experience of participating in one of the Palladino sessions: "In my opinion, this is an area of ​​\u200b\u200bcompletely new facts and physical states in space, of which we have not the slightest idea."

If Curie had lived a little longer, he would have known that Palladino had been exposed as a fraud. It is discovered that she was secretly using her leg to manipulate objects. The following year, she was caught using a strand of her hair to move things discreetly.

Bohr: A Clever Way to Avoid Tough Questions

Niels Bohr, teaching physics at the University of Copenhagen, developed a wonderful way to avoid difficult and uncomfortable questions. When one of the students cornered him during a seminar or lecture, he took a matchbox, apparently to light a fire for experiments, and allegedly accidentally dropped it on the floor. The matches fell apart, and Bohr collected them for a while. The questioner either lost the thread of the conversation, or realized that the professor did not want to answer his questions.

Hubble: an aristocrat not by birth

The brilliant astronomer Edwin Hubble was a renowned scientist who played a huge role in human understanding of the laws of the universe. However, according to most, he was a somewhat strange person. Although he grew up in rural America, he decided he would be an aristocrat. After a stay at Oxford University in England, he began to speak in a fake British accent and began to walk, dressed in classic capes and leaning on a cane.