Teach17

A collection of hands-on demos, experiments and challenges to bring the physics department to life at the open morning. Pick a handful to run brilliantly rather than spreading thin across all of them.

1. Van de Graaff generator – visitors touch the dome and watch their hair stand on end. Simple, safe, and it does the recruiting for you from across the hall.
2. Levitating magnet track – a magnet floating and gliding above a track of repelling magnets, no strings or tricks, just magnetism doing something that looks impossible.
3. Bed of nails – a volunteer lying safely on a board of nails while a brick is broken on their chest, tying straight into a chat about pressure and surface area.
4. Cloud chamber – a simple dry-ice cloud chamber showing the actual vapour trails of cosmic rays and background radiation passing through, invisible particles made visible.
5. Resonance and standing waves – a Ruben’s tube or singing rod showing sound waves shaping flames or producing eerie tones, always draws a crowd.
6. Non-Newtonian fluid speaker – a speaker cone covered in cornflour and water, dancing and leaping as the bass hits, a loud and messy way into vibrations.
7. Build a simple circuit – breadboards, batteries and LEDs set up so visitors wire their own circuit and light a bulb themselves in under a minute.
8. Egg drop challenge – visitors design a simple protective case from basic materials and drop an egg from height to test it, with a running record of survivors.
9. Balloon rocket race – a balloon fired along a string by its own escaping air, a fast and visual route into Newton’s third law.
10. Optical illusions and lenses – a set of lenses, mirrors and prisms visitors can play with to bend, split or invert light themselves.
11. Marble roller coaster – a track of tubing and supports visitors rebuild and test with marbles, exploring energy transfer through trial and error.
12. Physics trivia leaderboard – a live high score chart running all morning, giving people a reason to swing back past the stand and try to beat their score.
13. Student research and project showcase – posters or screens of the strongest student investigations, with the students themselves on hand to talk visitors through them.
14. Spectrometer and colour station – diffraction gratings or a simple spectrometer showing how white light splits into a full spectrum, and how different light sources give different signatures.
15. Air cannon and vortex rings – a bin-lid air cannon firing visible smoke rings across the room, always good for a laugh and a genuine question about fluid dynamics.
16. Careers wall with real pathways – actual alumni stories showing the route from GCSE or A-level physics into apprenticeships, degrees or jobs, ideally with a QR code linking to short video clips.
17. Build a simple motor station – wire, magnets and a battery laid out so visitors build a basic spinning motor themselves, paired with a quick explanation of the force behind it.