At the Experimentus exhibition
Among the 150 exhibits are instruments able to measure physical phenomena: all available for visitors to touch, twist and press. You can measure your ‘power’ using the ‘Person-Battery’ device, while the Tesla coil can light a bulb remotely and Jacob’s ladder shows how lightning strikes.
Other exhibits include a wave pendulum, a ball-plasma, a da Vinci bridge, huge chess figures, Braille script, Newton’s cradle, Heron’s fountain and a prototype of a perpetuum mobile.
The collection is the work of three Minsk enthusiasts, who call themselves the PR Club artistic association. One, Yuri Zhlobich, tells us the history of the collection, saying, “The most interesting aspect is that none of us is a physicist by education but we have been keen to know about physical processes and their demonstration since childhood. It took around 15 years to collect these items: our ‘visual material for a course of school physics’. If all were shown during school lessons the world would be deeply scientific. Rather than learning by rote how electricity originates or the Archimedes’ principle, pupils would create the physical processes themselves. It’s exciting. The major goal of the event is to encourage schoolchildren and their physics teachers to organise practical lessons.”
The exhibition will remain in Gomel until January 10th and will then move to Vitebsk and Minsk.
By Stanislav Galkovsky
