I created this show in 2008 for a short tour of Scottish schools, funded by the Royal Institution. I subsequently performed it for more schools in a two-week season at Glasgow Science Festival, for schools at Manchester Science Festival, and did another tour for schools in London and the Midlands, including performances at the RI itself. The same sequence of demonstrations, supported by different commentary, works for both primary and secondary pupils.
The initial theme of the show is "how do I move?", and Newtons' 3rd Law; the show then moves on to gravity and orbits, microgravity, and balance. The show includes many demonstrations from the standard repertoire, and some of my own, namely gravity-defying water and the balancing beams.
The demo list is:
- Setting my hand on fire (an outright gimmick to get the audience's attention).
- Propelling myself on a skateboard by throwing a medicine ball.
- Simple balloon rocket.
- Horizontal water rocket, demolishing a wall made of toilet rolls. Many thanks to Lindsay Hogg, who (when I was completely stuck for ideas) suggested using toilet rolls as cheap and light things to build a wall out of. The toilet rolls also have a nice comedy angle.
- Exploding hydrogen balloon (energy conversion from fuel).
- The inertial balancing board (I'll do a page about this demo one day).
- Spinning a swivel chair (and occupant) using a high-pressure water rocket on an arm attached the chair.
- Spinning a swivel chair using a heavy-rimmed bicycle wheel (conservation of angular momentum). I found that filling the inner tube with mortar was a good way of weighting the rim.
- Video of astronauts in weightless conditions.
- Animation illustrating the "Newton's Cannon" thought-experiment. I wrote this as an Excel spreadsheet using Visual Basic.
- Dropping a bottle of water with a hole in the side of it. As long as the bottle is in free-fall, the water doesn't come out of the hole. Many thanks to Paul McCrory, who suggested that I do this demo with a teacher standing next to the drop zone. I'm also indebted to Paul for watching a show, giving me valuable feedback, and then taking the trouble to write the feedback up and send it to me.
- The gravity-defying water demonstration - showing how you can create something akin to artificial gravity.
- Balancing a soft drink can on its corner.
- Rollers rolling uphill (the rollers have eccentric weights).
- The balancing beams.
I don't yet have any good photographs from the show.