Your basic dynamics trolley looks something like this:
We mainly use them for experiments on velocity or acceleration and generally use a light gate for the measurements. In order to break the light beam you have to attach some sort of 'sail' to the back of the trolley which up until now has generally been a piece of cardboard stuck on with sellotape or blu tack.
That was never really an ideal way to do it. For starters it looks a mess, and the sails are often not stiff enough and will bend or fold over and not break the beam as cleanly as we want. I've been trying to come up with a solution to this problem for ages and it suddenly struck me a couple of weeks ago.
I had a load of these clips in a drawer which I didn't really have a use for. I think they're for holding pipes or cables. My thinking was, if I attach the clips to the back of the trolley then they could hold and support the sail. Even better, I had some 10cm squares of hardboard which we used for an old ISA which I thought would make ideal sturdy sails.
Initially I just glued the clips to the trollies to see if the concept was sound, and the teachers loved it! I've now screwed the clips on and hopefully our velocity practicals will be a bit smoother now.
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| The finished article |
ps. It's now half way through lesson 1 on tuesday. Still no requisition sheet from astroboy!
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