Physics equipment?

[musicposy]

My two girls are doing IGCSE physics this summer and we're really short on equipment. We've been as resourceful as possible, using the bath and a lamp for a ripple tank, made our own pulleys and weights, along with utilising many other home made items, but there's a few things we need that I just can't find (at any reasonable price).

We're doing light and spectra at the moment and I need stuff like prisms, mirrors, lenses, and we will be doing electromagnitism, so I'll need stuff for that too.

Have looked on rapid online but their cheapest prism set is ££££. Hope education also seem pricey. Plus we could also do with a ray box, but they are £££££££.

I really don't have the money to spend - we could spend a small amount but certainly not getting towards 3 figures for the lot.

Anyone bought, begged, borrowed any science equipment from anywhere I haven't thought of? I keep trawling these websites online only to find that most are geared towards mass orders for schools and/ or don't quote prices.

Alternatively, has anyone got any bright ideas as to how we could make do with other, cheaper items to do the same experiments?

I know it's a long shot!

dunno if Opitec would be of use?

They sell all sorts of equipement, don't know if physics stuff would be there..........but if it is it will be a good price I'm willing to bet!

We used to LOVE the opitec catalogue anyway!

music - can't you make most of it?
raybox = bare light bulb in a black box with a slit, surely you have mirrors already, could a glass merchant cut you a prism out of a bit of thick glass?
ask on freecycle for old spectacles - broken ones would be fine if one lens ok, use part of a broken wine bottle and smooth the edges off in a flame.

I don't know whereabouts you are, but Intech has as one of its exhibits prisms and stuff like that - could you go there (or somewhere similar) for those types of experiments?

Ooh, thanks for these suggestions. The websites look great! Optiec I never saw before and could spend hours looking at it. The nasco site have convex/ concave mirrors and lenses for next to nothing - I would never have found that myself!

We will do the raybox ourselves - I'm just never very inventive over such things so need someone less stupid to tell me

DH would love to make lenses out of bottle bottoms and smooth them off in a flame! I will set him to work.

Will let you know what I get!

COCKadoodledoo we're not too far from INTECH (probably about an hour, maybe less) and I was wondering about that. I've never been and it's hard to grasp from the website exactly what is there, although it did look like there were lots of those types of things.

I'm just wondering which would be the better, ordering our own stuff we can re-use, or spending the money on the drive to Intech and the entrance fee - which might inspire them more. We're near enough to possibly justify an annual pass (especially as DD2 loves science) - but not sure if we'd use it enough.

Have you been there yourself?

I have, a couple of times so far, but it will be much more I'm sure - dh is a physics teacher and ds1 (7) is a geek-in-training! I was going to say it might be a bit busy for 'proper' study, but if you're home edding then I guess you'd be going during the week so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

There is a lot to do there imo, plus they have the planetarium shows, and also they look to have some fantastic lecture series etc., but not tried those myself.

Are you any closer to Bracknell? The Lookout have a light table with lenses and prisms that you can play with to your hearts content (although I found creating a rainbow with a ray box and prism quite tricky. Possibly 20 odd years rust on how I was meant to do it, possibly not the highest quality equipment...)

I'm lusting after masses of physics kit now. Even though DD isn't 4 yet . You lot are a bad influence :o

We're v lucky Tangle - whenever dh gets a new bit of kit he brings it home to try out

COCKadoodledooo - I'm jealous!