Physics and Technology

On the 2nd floor you find a large variety of experiments covering physics, mathematics and technology. Simple experiments illustrate the famous laws of nature: Pulling and Pushing, Turning and Lifting, Falling, Flying …  All these forces are applied, can be felt and become easy to understand.

Some phenomena challenge the power of our imagination: Our "infinite“ transmission for example consists of 10 cogs with a gear reduction of 1:10. When turning the crank, only the first few cogs turn and the remaining cogs appear to stand still. This effect seems rather surprising, but the explanation is that the gear reduction causes the last cog to take years to complete a single turn (and as a side effect school classes learn, without effort, what it means to apply the power of ten!).

A large size model of a tooth drill was built to explain how gears are used in everyday applications. The enormous gear ratio and thus rotation speed acts to stabilize the tool so that the hand of the dentist holding the drill is invariably steady!