Mechanics

Dragonfly Muscles: Forces and Movement

Construct a flapping dragonfly with cardstock and elastic to learn about forces, force diagrams, and the direct flight muscles of dragonflies. Dance to compare the muscles that move your arm to the muscles that move a dragonfly’s wing.

This demo is part of the 2024 SOCK, The Wonders of the Dragonfly.

Dragonfly Flight: Gliding

Build paper airplanes to learn about the forces behind flying and gliding and how we measure glide efficiency! Modify the wing's shape, weight, stiffness, and texture of your airplane to try and beat the glide efficiency of a dragonfly! 

This demo pairs well with Dragonfly Flight: Vortices and Dragonfly Muscles: Forces and Movement. This demo is part of the 2024 SOCK, The Wonders of the Dragonfly.

Brain Reaction Time

Discover how long it takes for the brain to react to a stimulus by catching a ruler as fast as you can.

Soda Straw Rocket

Construct a paper rocket and launch it using a straw to study forces and momentum!

Racing Cylinders

Learn about moment of intertia and rotaional mechanics through racing food cans down an inclinded plane.

Egg Crush

This demonstration dramatically shows how not just the strength of a material, but how it is designed, is important when withstanding forces.

Impulse on Eggs

Participants learn about impulse by building vehicles to drop eggs in. 

Density Column

This surprising demonstration illustrates the relationship between densities and buoyant forces.

This demonstration provides a visual for how the diversity of matter affects interactions between different materials. The participants will be able to view a visually striking, easy-to-assemble display of various solids and liquids that tend to separate from one another due to their densities. The demonstration goes on to explain how this relates to the different states of matter, and makes a mention of the buoyant forces responsible for making objects float.