2B30.30-Magdeburg Hemispheres

Video: Watch this demo

Instructor’s video

Description: This demonstration shows a behavior of atmospheric pressure.

Equipment:

• Vacuum pump
• Magdeburg Hemispheres

Setup Procedure:

1. Plug the vacuum pump in and make sure it works.

Demonstration Procedure:

1. Have a small student pull apart the hemispheres with the vacuum pump off (easy).
2. Now, turn on the vacuum pump and have a strong student try and pull them apart (very hard).
3. When finished, turn off the vacuum pump.

Notes:

To open these, the student would have to pull with a force of about 250 pounds. (Optional) To do this out, say the radius of each disk is 1.6in. The surface area (pi*r*r) is thus about 16 square inches for both spheres. The atmosphere has on about 14.7 PSI, so that comes out to about 280 pounds of force.

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