Raymond Hall
Physics and Mathematics Describe the Real Magic of the Universe
For the past three years I have been generating original video content
of extraordinary and surprising phenomena and posting them on the
social media platform Instagram. Each short of 60 seconds or less is
designed, via the simplest means possible, to invite exploration of
the true and astonishing nature of the physical world and the beauty
of mathematical relationships. My art lies mostly in the exposition of
these phenomena to the viewer using toys, kinetic art, clever simple
mechanisms, and sometimes devices of my own creation.
As of February 2019, more than 1.25 million subscribers follow
@physicsfun on Instagram, my online museum of science, math, and
curiosity.
Scrap Metal Kinetic Sculpture: A bent spring becomes a complex coupled harmonic oscillator system with two modes of oscillation, one along a horizontal direction and one at a relative angle. As the kinetic energy trades back and forth between the two modes the end of the spring traces out a Lissajous type curve (revealed by a white LED) which gets smaller in size each cycle as energy dissipates from the system. The intricacy of this motion is captured by recording the light traced using the Slow Shutter Cam App which unveils the nested curves, the overall shape of which is determined by the initial release conditions. From a series of explorations into the beauty of periodicity and damped motion found in simple irregular systems.