How to recreate a Star Wars sound effect!

Last week was National Science and Engineering Week. So to celebrate Trevithick Library hosted a fun event during Friday lunch time where students showed off their science skills.

A few students from the Physics Department kindly gave up their lunch break to come and perform some “Science Busking”. For those of you unfamiliar with the term it involves the kinds of scientific tricks that they do on the streets in programmes such as BBC’s “Bang goes the Theory”, effectively a scientific trick to hopefully wow and amaze!

Tricks that wowed and amazed included, the piercing of a balloon and subsequent balancing of a cork and two forks as can be seen in the photo above!

Two students also demonstrated the strength of paper by interweaving the pages of two magazines together and then using all their might and failing to pull them apart:

Perhaps the most impressive trick for the scifi geeks among us was the recreation of the sound of a laser from Star Wars. For this you take one metal slinky and one styrofoam cup. Place the cup in the end of the slinky and then bounce the slinky up and down. Hey presto you have that amazing Star Wars sound effect!