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Gary the first professor

The electricity guy

The glass blower

Today we we fortunate enough to tour the ASU chemistry wing. There was a lot of demonstrations and science experiments that we saw to day that I learned from and enjoyed watching. The first thing my group did was visit one of the lecture rooms where one of the professors showed us several demo’s showing chemistry. One of the things he showed us was liquid nitrogen. He showed us a few of its physical characteristics. The first thing he told us was that on order for hydrogen to attain its liquid state it has to be very very cold. He then proceeded to pour the liquid all over the floor, however the air was to warm and the liquid nitrogen went back to its gas state before it hit the ground. He also showed us what happened when things were put into liquid nitrogen.  He put a balloon into the cold substance and the balloon shrank. He explained that the atoms in the balloon cooled down so they stayed in a smaller area and the walls of the balloon collapsed to fill in the empty space. Next my group had a little demonstration with light where we learned about a optical illusion. Our next professor had a fan with three different colors on three blades. She also had a strobe light that she could set to whatever frequency of light repetition she wanted. She then turned off the lights and set the light just right to make it appear like the fan was standing still. She said it appeared this way because the light was flashing every full repetition of the fan so we only saw it in one position. Next she gave us another little demonstration in liquid nitrogen  by freezing in it a rubber bouncy ball then as it hit the floor it shattered. It shattered because it was so cold it had actually changed forms from a rubber to a glass. After this my group split in to two even smaller groups and visited two new professors who demonstrated things in their area of science to us. The first man I went to was demonstrating a few electrical labs for us. The first one he did was my favorite. He had all of us hold hands and stand in a line and hold hands and the last one of us put our hand on a metal wall. Then he put his hand on some sort of electricity producing machine. Then he had the last one of us put touch their elbow to his. Before there elbows even touched a spark ran through all of our bodies making me feel a funny sensation in my wrists. He explained that with electricity it wasn’t the amount of voltage that would harm you because we had just been hit with 50000 volts of electricity. It is about the stream of electricity and how fast it is moving. After that he also explained how a particle accelerator works. Then my group rotated to the next scientist who taught us about vacuums He explained how in the a vacuum is any place with an absence of air. Lastly we went to see a professional glass blower who made a wonderful glass swan for us.To round off our day we had lunch with some undergrads and saw the first professor one more time. That was my day at ASU.