In this demonstration students observe oil floating on water and ice floating on oil. You can use it to test understanding of...

Practical Activity 11-14

Thomas Young was born in 1773. He is reported to have begun reading at the age of two and to have read the bible twice by the...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

The tongues of frogs and toads are finely evolved to capture prey.

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Researchers have found that the way in which large kangaroos move has an interesting feature — the metabolic cost of the...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Food scientists study the mechanical properties of food and have calculated the Young’s moduli of a range of foods.

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Material scientists have developed many ingenious substances to solve engineering problems, but one of the most audacious was...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Charles de Coulomb carried out some of the earliest published research on brittle materials. His work led to him travelling...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Writing in the first century, the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder displayed a misconception about the properties of diamonds.

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Whilst macroscopic diamonds cannot undergo large strains without breaking, researchers have manufactured diamond nanoneedles...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Candy floss and lollipops are technically considered glasses as they are materials which have been cooled to a rigid state...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

It is often reported that glass is a super-cooled liquid and that glasses gradually flow over time.

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Richard Feynman famously demonstrated the role of brittleness in the failure of a rubber O-ring in the Challenger Space...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16