A Paper clip float on water because of surface tension. If you place a paper clip on the surface of still water, it will not sink because of surface tension. In liquids, molecules are attracted to each other in all directions except for the ones at the boundary. The unequal attraction of all the molecules that are at the surface forms a 'skin'. When you look at this picture you see that the paper clip forms a depression in the surface of the water. If the pressure exerted by the paper clip is low enough, then the surface tension can support it, therefore making it float.

Why does oil rise istead of sink?

Oil rises because of the force called buoyancy. This force causes object to float. The fact that oil is less dense than water, causes there to be a greater buoyancy force on the oil than the downward force of gravity on the oil. This causes the oil to rise in the water. If the oil was more dense than water, then it would sink because it would exceed the buoyancy force.

Why don't water and oil mix?

This is an example of vegetable oil and water not mixing together.

In order for a substance to dissolve in another substance they have to have similar electric dipole moments. An electric dipole moment is the measure of separation of positive and negative electrical charges in a system of charges. Which is a measure of the charge systems polarity. An electric dipole has both a positively charged end and a negatively charged end. One of the ends may be bigger than the other. The distance between the ends and the magnitudes of the 2 charges determines the strength of the dipole. Therefor, dipoles with similar strengths dissolve in each other way better than dipoles with drastically different strengths. Oil and water do not mix because they have very different dipole moments. Therefor, they do not dissolve in each other.

Oil and Water

I'm going to be researching the affects of dropping oil in water. I think this is a very appropriote topic to research at this time because of the Oil spill in the Gulf. I'll be researching different questions for example....
1. Why don't water and oil mix?
2. Why does oil rise instead of sinking?

I'll be taking a picture of this when I test it.

Sunrise to Sunset I will not forget all that you've done for me...

Last night I took a trip to the beach at sunset. It was a beatuiful night and perfect for the kind of picture I wanted to capture. It's amazing how beautifully God created things with such detail and all we have to do is look outside to see this. By taking a lens and holding it at the horizon, it demonstrates refraction. Refraction causes light to bend, therefore you see through the lens that it flips the sunset upside down.

Rainbows

Today's task was to create a rainbow. It's a beautiful sunny day, so it worked out perfectly. In the backyard of my house, i sprayed water in the air and took a picture of the light that was reflected. Rainbows consist of reflections of light off of tiny water droplets. The light penetrates the front side of the water drop and reflects off the back part of the water drop. The color that appears is based on the angle the light is reflected. Only a partial rainbow is seen is this picture because a rainbow only appears where water is.

More physics photos to come.