Shopcasts and Videos – Little Shop of Physics

LSOP: Invisible Forces, March 5, 2021

By request from a local school: Invisible Forces! You can’t see gravity—but you can certainly see its effects. And it works at a distance—you don’t need to be in contact with the earth to feel its pull. We say that the earth has a gravitational field around it—and if you are in the field, you […]

LSOP Open House 2021

The 30th Annual Little Shop of Physics Open House took place on February 27, 2021. The theme was We Are All Still Connected, and the event took place virtually on Zoom and Facebook Live. Hundreds of people from all over the world attended. Presentations were hosted by Colorado State University students, faculty and staff. We […]

LSOP Live: Science It Up!, February 26, 2021

Last week, we asked students to share their questions with us—and did they ever! We got questions from “Why can we see clouds, since they are made of air?” to “Why do snowflakes have different designs?” On this episode, we take one question after another and Science It Up! We take each question and use [...]

LSOP Live: Bouncing, Bending, and Twisting Light, February 19, 2021

Mirrors, lenses, and polarizers, oh my! In this episode we show you some amazing effects that you can recreate at home. We make objects seem to disappear, make transparent objects develop colors, turn people upside down, make a mirror out of transparent materials, and show you how to use a mirror to make what seems [...]

LSOP Live: Sinking and Floating, February 12, 2021

A bowling ball—does it sink or float? The answer might surprise you, as will dozens of the experiments we share. We float bubbles and steel balls, and make a ketchup packet go back and forth between sinking and floating. We answer the question: What happens to buoyancy when you turn off gravity? And we leave [...]

LSOP Live: The Music Show, February 5, 2021

Talking about music gives us a chance to talk about forces, frequency, energy, vibrations, and states of matter. It’s a rich topic, and one we had a lot of fun exploring. How many ways can you play Hot Cross Buns? We play it on glasses, bottles, sewer pipes, electrical conduit, and, of course, actual hot [...]

LSOP Live: It’s About Time, January 29, 2021

This episode is about time! We use video to slow time down, to speed time up, to make time go backwards—and we see how this changes our view of the world. We also do some cool tabletop experiments with metronomes, with hot cocoa, and with hand sanitizer. What do these things have to do with [...]

LSOP Live: The Heart of the Matter, January 22, 2021

This week, we are trying something new! We treat topics that are part of the state science standards, to better connect with what students are learning in school. This week, we consider the following fact: matter is made of atoms. Understanding this helps understand matter’s appearance and its behavior. Why is steel bouncy? (It is—very [...]

LSOP Live: The Water Show, January 15, 2021

What’s so special about water? Quite a bit, as it turns out! In this episode, we show you a bunch of simple experiments you can do that illustrate the special properties of water. We make water freeze on command, make a stream of water follow a string, use water to lift writing off glass, and [...]

LSOP Live: The Weather Show, January 8, 2021

What makes clouds form? And why are they white? How does the spin of the earth lead to the spin of a storm? Why do some storms make lightning? And how does lightning lead to thunder? We answer all of these questions—and more!—on our first show of 2021!