"Electroscope"

Thursday's class was eventful in a way. We first got to class and went over the reading guides for a little bit and then moved onto the experiment. The reason that I said the class was eventful was because Dr. E did numerous demonstrations with a balloon to try and help her students understand the material a little bit better. I really enjoy when Dr. E does examples in class because it helps her students to comprehend the material more thoroughly. After going through the reading guides, Dr. E allowed for us to do an interesting experiment. The materials for the experiment were: 4 plastic drinking straws, 2 plastic 35 mm film cans, modeling clay, tape, a balloon, and a wool sheet of material. This lab dealt with forces attracting each other and repelling each other. To start off the lab, we first had one person stick the modeling clay in the cans while another person read the lab out-loud. We first ripped off two pieces of tape, each about 4 cm long and then placed them on the table. We then ripped the tape off the table really hard and then placed one piece of tape on two of the straws (their were two straws in each canister but we made sure the tape was in the two different canisters, not both). We then moved the cans so that the tapes faced each other and then slowly moved the cans closer and closer together to see the two tapes repel each other. We then grabbed two more pieces of tape and pressed the sticky side of one against the smooth side of the other, leaving one end of each tape sticking out as a handle. Then we quickly ripped the tapes apart and stuck them on the remaining two straws. We then moved the canisters apart and then brought them together again slowly, to only notice that the two tapes attracted each other. We then rubbed the balloon against the wool material to build static and then brought it up to the different pieces of tape and saw how it attracted to some and repelled against others. I really enjoyed this experiment, it surprised me to see some of the outcomes that we got.