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Structural materials are required to withstand a variety of applied loads in use. Understanding how these materials respond to applied loads is vital for informed materials selection. Here you can investigate how materials behave under tensile loading (loads applied along the length of a material to cause stretching).
This is only the LITE version, the full version (wtih all materials) is availabe via log-in.
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What is ‘Tensile Testing’?
The ‘tensile’ properties of a material describe its most basic mechanical behaviour – how much does a material stretch when it is pulled and how much of the stretching is permanent? ‘Tensile Testing’ is the process of measuring a material’s tensile properties.
Why are tensile properties important?
Understanding of tensile properties is vital for any application that uses materials structurally, i.e. to withstand or apply force. The range of uses this covers is enormous. Strong and stiff structures are used in vehicles (cycles, cars, trains, aeroplanes, spacecraft), bridges and buildings, sports equipment and bio-implants (e.g. hip joint replacements). Flexible materials are also used in many of these applications. Thin but robust materials are used in touchscreens. Hard materials are used in machines and robots that process and shape other materials and as durable coatings that improve the performance and lifetime of aerospace and bio-implant components. Elastic materials can be stretched enormously before any permanent change is made and are used in springs and high performance fabrics. And it’s not just how a component is used – many manufacturing processes involve changing a component’s shape or response to applied forces, e.g. extrusion to make tubes, beams and bottles; drawing to make springs or wires; or forging and rolling to shape and harden metals.
To select a sample:
To set the strain increment:
To apply strain to samples:
These instructions can be downloaded below.
Download: Tensile Testing Quick Guide Oct 2020Download the file below for the full instructions, including background, relevance, operating instructions and questions.
Structural materials are required to withstand a variety of applied loads in use. Understanding how these materials respond to the applied loads is vital for informed materials selection. Here we investigate how materials behave under tensile loading (loads applied along the length of a material to cause stretching).
The Tensile Test experiment allows a number of mechanical tests to be performed on materials, including:
The Tensile Testing experiment can be used for a wide range of investigations.
This downloadable pdf below contains a range of example short and long questions.
We have also provided a spreadsheet file to allow you to enter your SAMPLE WIDTH, STRAIN and APPLIED LOAD data and obtain stress-strain plots. (HINT: to investigate the general form of stress-strain curves with younger students, use a default sample width of, say, 7 mm)
Download: Tensile testing questions Download: Tensile Testing spreadsheet6Watch the video and download the file below to learn about the scientific background of Tensile Tests
Download: Tensile testing background
Ohm's law is a fundamental equation that shows how voltage, electrical current and electrical resistance are related in simple conductors such as resistors. This experiments allows you to explore Ohm's law and how the coloured bands on resistors codes their resistance. In doing this you will also learn how to use a power supply and 'digital multimeters'.
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Ohm’s law
Voltage, current and resistance are the most fundamental quantities for describing the flow of electricity. Ohm’s law shows how these three quantities are related and so is a powerful way of understanding the basic nature of electricity.
This is relevant to vast areas of technology today, including national electricity grids, power generation, design of all electronic devices and all electronic circuits, heating, electrical safety and understanding of natural phenomena such as lightning. This experiment will allow you to explore Ohm’s law by making measurements of voltage, current and resistance.
Resistors
Resistors are the simplest and most commonly used electronic component and almost all electronic circuits them. They can be used to change the properties of any circuit they are part of, such as current flow, how voltage is distributed across components, the speed of a circuit, the amount of amplification from a circuit, the response of a sensor or the amount of electrical heating from a circuit.
The simplest resistors are made of a thin film or wound wire of carbon or metal. They usually have a series of coloured bands that represents both their target resistance value and how much the actual value might vary from this (the ‘tolerance’). This experiment lets you practise selecting the appropriate colour bands on a resistor to achieve a certain resistance value.
Digital Multimeters
Digital multimeters (DMMs) are versatile pieces of equipment commonly found in electronics, physics and engineering labs. In this experiment you’ll learn how to use a DMM to measure voltage, current and resistance. You’ll see this piece of equipment in many other FlashyScience experiments!
Download the attached file for the Quick Guide including a table of resistor colour bands (requires log in) or follow these instructions:
To measure resistance:
To change the resistor:
To use voltage and current:
Please download the attached file for full operating instructions of the Ohm’s Law experiment (requires log in)
See attached file for questions on the experiment (requires log in)
Download attached file to see background information for this experiment (requires log in)
Gravity is a fundamental force in nature, without which we would not have galaxies, stars, the Earth, oceans, life on Earth... or golf.
This experiment allows you to measure the acceleration due to gravity by measuring the time taken for a ball to fall through different heights. You can choose between two ways of timing the free fall, and you can even travel through space to measure the strength of gravity on different objects of the Solar system!
It is safe to say that gravity is important to us! Without gravity there would be no life on Earth and, in fact, without gravity, the Earth would never have existed.
Gravity is responsible for stars forming in the first place, keeping the Sun from exploding from the heat it generates, and for the structure of galaxies. It also keeps the Earth in orbit around the Sun, keeps our atmosphere and oceans in place and means we don’t float off into space. Gravity even allows plants to detect which was is ‘up’ so they send their roots and shoots in the right directions. You can see more at this NASA web page.
So, why does it matter that we know how strong gravity is?
Well, for lots of reasons.
The strength of gravity is essential to know in Civil Engineering projects such as design of
buildings and bridges so we can calculate the stresses materials are under.
Aircraft and space rocket designers must know the strength of gravity that must be overcome and satellite technology is based upon a certain strength of gravity to maintain orbits at particular heights above the Earth.
Hydroelectric power generation also relies on gravitational potential energy, either through energy ‘storage’ in dams or from the water flow or tides in rivers or oceans.
Our quality of life would be very different too. Most sports rely on gravity (we’re not counting chess as a sport here!) and gravity even keeps food in a saucepan while it cooks!
Download the one-page guide through the link to see how to operate the Free Fall experiment (requires log in).
Basic operation is as follows:
Measured Earth’s gravity? Click on the poster to explore gravity elsewhere in the Solar System too!
Click on the link to download the full operating instructions for the Free Fall due to Gravity experiment (requires log in)
Click the link to download a file with four example experiments (requires log in). These are:
Exp 1. Measurement of g using pressure pad sensor
Exp 2. Measurement of g using light gate sensors
Exp 3. Travel the Solar System!
Exp 4. Uncertainty in g based on uncertainty in individual measurements
Click on the link to download a file that explains how to calculate acceleration due to gravity (requires log in). This also describes ways of determining and combining uncertainties in experimental measurements .
Radioactive materials are used by us in lots of ways. This experiment allows you to explore alpha, beta and gamma radiation and how they are absorbed by various materials. You can also measure the change in radioactive signal with distance from the radiation source and even time travel to measure the halflife of radioactive decay for different elements!
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Radioactive elements (radionuclides or radioactive isotopes) produce high energy particles and are used in a huge range of applications. Most people know about nuclear power, which converts the energy of radiation from uranium-238 or plutonium-239 into heat and then electrical power, even in small-scale form for remote applications (e.g. spacecraft). There are far more widespread uses all around us though.
Radionuclides are used in many medicinal applications. They can be used as tracers to follow fluid flow inside the body by detecting the radionuclide emitted radiation (e.g. technetium-99, thallium-201, iodine-131 and sodium-24). Medical imaging can use radioactive elements that naturally collect in particular parts of the body and image the radioactive emission. For example, iodine-131 is used to image the thyroid and other isotopes can be used for other organs, such as bones, heart, liver and lungs. Larger doses of the radionuclides (e.g. cobalt-60) are used to create a targeted radiotherapy treatment of cancer in these organs. It is even possible to detect the presence of Heliobacter pylori (an unwanted bacterium that can be in stomachs) with a simple breath test that uses carbon-14.
You may have radioactive materials in your home, school or workplace. Smoke detectors use alpha radiation from americium-241 to ionise smoke particles for detection. Glow-in-the-dark inks on clocks, watches and emergency signs that convert radioactive particle energy from promethium-147 into light.
You may also have food that has been treated with radiation. Many foods (including tomatoes, mushrooms, berries, cereals, eggs, fish and some meat products) are irradiated with gamma rays from cobalt-60 to kill micro-organisms and improve the food’s shelf life (without making the food radioactive!). Similarly, gamma radiation from caesium-137 is used to sterilise medical products such as syringes, heart valves, surgical instruments and contact lens solutions.
Radioactive elements are used in industry too. For example, the absorption of different types of radiation mean it can be used to monitor the thickness of manufactured components and sheets. Radionuclides are also used for detecting leaks from pipes, the direction of underground pipes and waste dispersal in the environment. Radioactive sources are also used in industrial imaging, with the sample placed between the radiation source and a detector. Certain isotopes are used as chemicals in order to trace chemical reaction routes, e.g. carbon-14 in photosynthesis. Similar approaches are used in biology to test when proteins undergo important ‘phosphorylation’ reactions (using phosphorus-32) to learn when their function is activated by other proteins or small chemicals.
Radioactive elements can also be used for historical dating of objects, e.g. carbon-14 dating for estimating the age of organic matter and uranium-238 for rocks. Similarly, radioactive decay from vintage drinks such as wine can be used to prove their age, since radionuclides were released into the atmosphere by nuclear explosion tests after World War II and are present in all food and drink produced since then.
With so many uses, it’s no wonder that radioactive decay is an important aspect of science and engineering!
Download the attached file to see the full Quick Guide (requires log in) or follow the instructions below:
Select the radiation source:
Detecting radiation:
Changing the filter material and thickness:
Change the source-detector separation:
Time travel!
Open the file below to see the full instructions for operating the Radiation experiment (requires log in):
Download the file below to see example experiments, including for GCSE and A-level (requires log in).
Or see if you can do some of the following:
Download the file below to see the scientific background of radioactive decay (requires log in)
The electrical resistivity of a wire tells us how well the wire material conducts electricity. This is crucial information for any application that involves conducting electricity, including wind turbines, electric vehicles, household electrical goods and computers. Here you can measure the resistivity of wires of different materials and widths, and consider which would be best suited for conducting electricity.
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Electronic materials are crucial to our life today, and electrical ‘resistivity’ tells us how good or poor a material is at conducting electricity.
We use materials with low electrical resistivity to transmit electrical power from generators, across grid distribution networks, and to homes and workplaces for use. Designers of electrical devices rely on knowing the resistivity of wire used in order to calculate the resistance of components.
These devices range in size from enormous machines such as wind turbines or industrial lifting equipment; motors or engines in electric vehicles and all-new electric aircraft; consumer products such as washing machines, hair dryers and ovens; and the nanoscale components within the computer chips found in smart devices, laptops, and mobile phones.
In fact, modern computing is based on controlling the resistivity of semiconductor materials in a type of transistor (known as ‘field effect transistors’ using ‘CMOS’ technology).
Measuring electrical resistivity helps us to understand the properties of materials, to monitor manufacturing processes, and to select the best material for an application.
Click on the link below to download the Quick Guide for using the Resistivity experiment. Or follow the brief instructions here:
Click on the link to download a pdf of the Instructions for operating the Resistivity experiment
Click on the link below to download a pdf of example questions for the Resistivity experiment.
Click on the link to download the Background pdf for the Resistivity experiment.
Hooke's law describes how springs respond to having forces applied. This experiment allows you to apply force using weights and measure how springs of different stiffness extend in response. You can calculate the stored elastic potential energy in the springs and even go to different parts of the Solar System to see how changing the strength of gravity changes the weight applied to the springs!
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Stretching – the truth!
You may wonder why we study springs and why questions about stretching springs appear on exams. Sure, springs are used in the world, but are they really so important? Why is it important to know how springs stretch when they are pulled?
Well, first, springs are incredibly useful. When made from elastic materials, such as most metals, springs stretch when pulled and return to their original size when released. They can also be compressed and, again, return to their original size when released. The stretching or compression stores energy that is then returned when the spring is released. This energy storage and return is the key reason springs are useful. Springs use this capability in all sorts of applications, including in high tech areas such as automotive, industrial tools and robotics, to more everyday items such as trampolines, mattresses, children’s play equipment, door handles and retractable pens.
The second reason is that the way that springs respond to force being applied to them (i.e. being pulled or mass added to one end of them) is identical to how materials in general behave. If materials are pulled, then they stretch. The coiled shape of a spring, though, means that the ends tend to move large distances compared to a regular shape of the same material (e.g. a simple rod). This means that studying what happens to springs when they are pulled allows simple measurements to be performed that give us understanding of how all materials behave when they are pulled. Materials behave this way in any application where they have force applied to them, e.g. in construction, vehicles, heart valves, body implants, plants, rocks, furniture, tools, footwear – the list goes on and on. And don’t forget this includes your body too!
Use this experiment to find out more!
Follow these instructions or download the Quick Guide via the link (requires log in):
5. To change to a different part of the Solar System:
6. Click the Information button to see the controls.
Use this experiment to:
Download the full Instructions for the Hooke's Law experiment from the link (requires log in)
There are lots of activities to do with the Hooke's Law experiment. You can choose these from one of our Activities, with step-by-step instructions, and record your work on a Worksheet, or use the shorter descriptions in our Questions. Download all of these from from the links (requires log in)
Download the file from the link below to see the full scientific Background to the Hooke's law experiment (requires log in)
Specific heat capacity of solids is important to understand in lots of applications that deal with heat energy and changes in temperature. This experiment allows you to control the electrical heating power applied to a choice of six different materials and measure the rate at which the sample temperature changes. You can then calculate the specific heat capacity of the chosen material. Compare the different materials, investigate the effect of having thermally insulated or uninsulated samples, and see if different heating powers change the measurements.
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There are lots of ways that we use materials that see them change temperature. Some examples include heating systems in buildings (especially storage heaters), simple household appliances such as an iron or an oven, combustion engines in cars, jet engines in aircraft, high speed machines such as drills, and industrial furnaces; however, examples also include applications where the temperature is reduced, for example in refrigerators, freezers and heat sinks, which are used to help cool another component.
A change in a material’s temperature will also result in a change in its heat energy. Different materials, however, will have a different change in heat energy for a given change in temperature.
The materials property we use to show this difference is called specific heat capacity. This property is key to allowing us to understand how components will perform in thermal applications and help us to choose the most appropriate material. If you go to study Physics or Engineering at university you will probably also learn how specific heat capacity values depend on a material’s types of atom, atomic bonding and electrical properties.
Download the attachment to see the one-page quick guide (requires login)
Download the attached file to see the full instructions for this experiment (requires login)
There are two files to download here, both requiring a login first.
The 'Activities' download gives full step-by-step instructions for four activities with this experiment
The 'Worksheets' download provides worksheets for these four activities that can be printed out and written on directly.
Download the attached file to see the scientific background to this experiment (requires login)
Understanding the relationship between force, acceleration and mass is key to starting to understand the physics of changing motion. This experiment allows you to change the mass of a tabletop car and the force applied to it before timing how long it takes the car to move various distances. Analysis of your results will allow you to see the relationship between acceleration and force.
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The FlashyScience Acceleration and Force experiment might use a toy car on a table top but the science you can learn from it helps us to understand the world around us, to design all sorts of new vehicles and machines, and even to understand our bodies better.
At the largest of scales, knowing the huge forces involved with galaxies, stars and planets show us how these huge objects move and even how they form. We use our knowledge of force and acceleration to launch objects into space using rockets and to put satellites into stable orbits. This knowledge also allows us to calculate the acceleration of high performance cars (e.g. F1 cars) and aircraft, to design and build machines with moving parts, and to understand the forces parts of our bodies experience through an area of science called biomechanics. Force and acceleration can even be used to measure the mass of atoms and molecules through scientific techniques called mass spectrometry, and help us to understand how atoms interact in gases.
You can see that knowledge of force and acceleration is essential to lots of areas of science, engineering and our lives in general. Why not try out the FlashyScience Acceleration and Force experiment to learn more for yourself?
Download the quick guide for the Acceleration and Force experiment below (requires login)
Download the full instructions for the Acceleration and Force experiment (requires login).
The attached activities and associated worksheets are suitable for different levels (needs login to view).
Download the file below to read about the background theory to the Acceleration and Force experiment (requires login). This includes different levels for GCSE Foundation and Higher Levels, and A-level Physics.
Density is an 'intrinsic' property of materials and liquids, which means its value doesn't change when the amount of material or liquid changes. This experiment allows you to find the density of various materials with regular and irregular shapes, as well as several liquids, using three methods of determining mass and volume.
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Density is a basic property of materials and liquids. It is important in all sorts of areas of science, engineering and medicine. Density (mass per unit volume) is related to the type of atoms within the material or liquid and how they are arranged. Changing the temperature of a solid or liquid often changes its volume, which also changes its density . Different processing treatments of materials can lock in some of these changes, resulting in materials made of the same atoms but with different densities. Many materials can be ‘porous’ (contain lots of holes) and being able to measure density is a simple way of finding the level of porosity of a material.
The buoyancy of a solid in a liquid depends upon the density of the solid and liquid. Ice floats in liquid water because ice molecules are more widely spaced than those in water, and so the density of ice is lower than that of water.
The density of solids and liquids is also related to a substance’s refractive index and how it interacts with X-rays. For example, your bones are denser than your muscle tissue and so absorb X-rays more; this allows medical images to be created that show the different regions inside your body.
Density is vital to the efficient design of physical objects, particularly for structural and transport applications. There is a huge demand for engineers and materials scientists to create lighter vehicles and aircraft to reduce their power requirements and help reduce our use of fossil fuels.
The FlashyScience Density of Solids & Liquids experiment allows you to develop your scientific and engineering skills in measuring density in three different ways. Why not give it a try?
Download the quick guide for the Density of Solids & Liquids experiment below (requires login)
Download the full instructions for the Density of Solids & Liquids experiment (requires login).
The attached activities and associated worksheets allow you to use the Density of Solids & Liquids experiment in lots of ways (needs login to view). These activities are for:
Download the file below to read about the background theory to the Density of Solids & Liquids experiment (requires login).
Heat is transmitted by conduction, convection or radiation. This experimental allows you to investigate thermal conduction by measuring the time for thermal energy to pass through different materials.
The thermal conductivity of materials is hugely important for how we live today.
Thermally-insulating materials are found in lots of places around the home. This includes safety items such as oven gloves or fire blankets and inside ovens and refrigerators to stop them heating or cooling the rest of your kitchen! Your hot water pipes and water heating system will probably have thermal insulation around them to stop unwanted heat loss. Houses and other buildings usually have thermal insulation around them to reduce heat loss when it is cold outside and reduce heat entering when it is very hot outside. This is important as we try to reduce CO2 emissions from energy use as part of our fight against climate change. Insulating materials are also used around industrial furnaces, in refrigerated vehicles and packages (e.g. for transporting food or medical supplies) in aircraft to keep crew and passengers warm in the cold air, and in spacecraft to stop the insides reaching temperature extremes and protecting the spacecraft itself from burning up if it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere.
Thermally-conducting materials are also very important to heating and cooling systems, such as heating elements in kettles and furnaces, radiators, high speed industrial machines and heat-sinks found in electronic devices.
Heat conduction is also really important in many renewable energy technologies, such as solar cells (photovoltaics), which work less efficiently if they heat up, and ‘thermoelectric generators’ (TEGs), which are most efficient if they conduct electricity well but conduct temperature weakly.
This huge range of applications means there is a lot of research and development of materials with new thermal conduction properties. How materials conduct heat is also related to their atomic-scale structure – this means that we can learn about the materials from how they conduct heat and change their structure in order to create new properties that are better suited for particular applications. There’s so much to find out! For now, why not start with the FlashyScience Thermal Insulation experiment?
Click below to download the Quick Guide pdf (requires login)
Click below to download the Thermal Insulation Instructions (requires login)
The instructions and worksheets for the following activities can be downloaded using the links below (requires login):
Activity 1: Effect of a material as thermal insulation
Activity 2: Comparison of different materials as thermal insulation
Activity 3: Effect of material thickness on heat conduction
Activity 4: Effect of temperature difference on its rate of change (Advanced Experiment)
Click below to download the Thermal Insulation Background pdf (requires login)
This experiment allows you to measure the infrared emission from the four different surfaces of a Leslie cube. You can choose which surface to measure, see what happens as temperature changes, and adjust the signal strength by changing the detector position and the level of signal amplification. Advanced activities involve calculations of emissivity, how signal varies with source-detector separation, and the temperature-dependence of infrared emission.
Any object emits electromagnetic radiation due to having a temperature above absolute zero (about -273.15°C), although different surfaces emit the radiation to different levels. This might seem like a curiosity created just for lab measurements but it has lots of real-world relevance.
The hotter an object is, the stronger this thermal emission is. Objects with different temperatures emit different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum too. Objects close to room temperature (like us!) only emit infrared radiation (‘IR radiation’), which we feel as warmth. Objects at hundreds of degrees Celsius start to emit visible radiation (wavelength from 400 – 700 nm), those at thousands of degrees Celsius emit ultra-violet (UV) radiation (wavelength from 100 – 400 nm), while the hottest objects in the galaxy (e.g. regions around black holes) emit X-ray radiation (wavelengths shorter than 100 nm).
The most important aspect of thermal emission is that life on our planet would not exist without it! Our nearest star, the Sun, is so hot its IR emission reaches across over 140 million kilometres (that’s over 90 million miles) of space to warm our planet. The Sun’s visible light also allows us to see. The Earth’s ozone layer plays an important role in absorbing most of the UV light from the Sun, which would otherwise reach us at harmful levels.
Astronomers also use the thermal emission from other stars and astronomical objects to learn about how they were formed, their lifecycle, and the processes that go on within them.
Climatologists and meteorologists (scientists who study the Earth’s climate and weather) use satellites to map the IR emission of the Earth’s atmosphere and land to help predict future weather events and trends. The surface of the Earth can also be imaged to locate underground heat sources, objects and water flows.
In smaller-scale applications, surface materials are often chosen to help either cool or insulate an object by either maximising or minimising IR emission, depending on what is needed. IR emission is used in some household or industrial heaters and to measure temperature in areas such as industrial manufacturing processes and medical applications, e.g. measuring the temperature of a patient.
‘Thermal imaging’ cameras create images from IR emission for a huge range of applications, including night vision (e.g. for security systems or non-invasive imaging of wild animals), analysing heat sources in electronic circuits, industrial monitoring (e.g. web servers, aircraft engines), and analysing the thermal efficiency of objects from miniature devices to houses.
Use the link below to download the one-page quick (requires login):
Download the Full Instructions for the Leslie cube experiment by clicking on the link below (requires login):
The instructions and worksheets for the following activities can be downloaded using the links below (requires login):
Download the Background theory file by clicking on the link below (requires login):
