Tag Archives: Energy Transformation

By Johna Till Johnson

One of the pleasures of having a blog is the ability to quickly share really cool discoveries with like-minded people.  This morning, my friend Steve Crandall sent me the link to his most recent blog post entitled the delight of turning potential energy into kinetic energy.

As Steve writes in his most excellent post:

You’ve all seen videos of large domino chains.  By standing a domino on end you are increasing its potential energy.  Energy that can be released later when the domino tips, turning stored potential energy into the energy of motion – kinetic energy…..With a bit of cleverness you can weave a pile of wooden sticks into a structure storing the energy that you used to flex them for later release.  Fifty sticks will give you and idea – a thousand will give you something wonderful.

He’s not kidding. Wish I had the time and floor space to try it!

If you want to try it, Steve’s post also has a how-to-do-it video.

By the way, I first met Steve at an event hosted by Coburn Ventures. We bonded over shared interests in physics and energy—along with the fact that we both have synesthesia, in my case quite mild and in his, rather intense.