Visual Arts

Header by Erin Monahan

2021-2022 Physics Photo Contest

During the 2021-2022 school year, Physics students were asked to submit photos demonstrating physical laws and corresponding essays explaining how they demonstrated those Physical Laws. Fifteen of these photos were submitted to the American Association of Physics Teachers as part of an international contest, and three of them were selected as being among the top 100 photos submitted. These photos are showcased below.

Julia Friday: "Window Prisms: Magic?"

My bedroom window features a collection of suncatchers. According to RainbowSymphony.com, “rainbow suncatchers use holographic prisms and diffraction,” to transform the sunlight passing through into a vivid spectrum of visible light. The color of sunlight, as defined by physics, is white. Our true perception of the white light is what we see when, as in the case of sunlight, the entire spectrum of visible light is emitted more or less homogeneously. Diffraction is the process by which a beam of light, or any system of waves, is spread out as a result of passing through narrow pathways that interfere with, and separate each individual wave. Every color on the visible light spectrum has its own wavelength– red having the longest and purple the shortest. This difference in wavelength means that during diffraction, each color is bent at a different angle; each colorexits the aperture at a slightly different angle and allows one to perceive each of the seven colors individually. The prisms in the suncatchers capture the passing light and, “different colors of light travel at different speeds inside the glass. Because the colors of light travel at different speeds, they get bent by different amounts and come out all spread out instead of mixed up” (The Wonders of Physics). Instead of being all mixed together and appearing as one, consistent stream of light from the sun, diffraction occurs within the prisms that break the light up and we see each individual part of the rainbow independently.

Bridie Looney: "No Suction, No Problem"

Physics is happening everywhere, including in your dog’s water bowl. Dogs and cats actually use the same unique way to drink and it's quite a process. Dogs can’t create suction in their mouths which means they can’t drink water the same way we do. I decided to take a slo-mo video of my dog drinking water so that I could show the physics present in an everyday occurrence. The first thing I examined was that my dog curled her tongue under and scooped the water from the bowl. At the same time, she slapped the water in order to displace it into her mouth. When the water was displaced and the tongue was quickly retracted, water was pulled into my dog's mouth by inertia. The law of inertia states that an object remains at rest until acted upon by an unbalanced force, which makes sense in this case. The water was at rest until acted upon by an outside force, the dog’s tongue. That is also why dog's make such a mess when they are drinking water. Not all the water that is displaced goes into the dog's mouth, most of it ends up on the floor instead. The last step I examined was she very quickly closed her mouth before gravity started to pull the water back towards earth. It's amazing to think that physics is present in daily tasks that you would never even think of!

Finn B. Radner: "The Plight of the Spoon Washer" - Received an Honorable Mention

We’ve all experienced it at least once in our lives—you’re washing the dishes and then all of a sudden, while washing a spoon, you find yourself soaked. It occurred to me that the water from this interaction would act similarly to a projectile, creating a parabolic flow of water through the air. So, I asked my dad to place a spoon underneath the tap (Which later got upgraded to a ladle), and I photographed the water. To no surprise, the water followed a parabolic arc through the air. This arc can be explained by treating the path of the water as the path of a projectile. In any projectile, a parabolic trajectory is followed due to the forces acting on the object. The only significant force acting on a projectile is gravity, causing the object to accelerate downward at a constant rate. Because no significant horizontal forces act on the object, it moves horizontally at a constant rate. And, since the object's vertical motion is quadratic in nature, the object follows a parabolic trajectory. In the case of flowing water, the same rules apply—the water accelerates downward and has no significant horizontal forces applied to it, resulting in a parabolic trajectory being followed which is uniquely easy to observe.