So, our physics teacher has the strange idea of motivating his students by letting each of us present a physical phenomenal we find interesting to our classmates in a 5-minutes-presentation. And now I need something that is interesting for everyone – even people that usually don’t care for physics -, but has interesting facts for someone who’s interested in it, too (preferably with an easy experiment). You don’t happen to have any ideas, do you?
First of all, your professor is awesome for taking the time to do this. Of the top of my mind, the best one I have is Chladni figures.
Basically take a flat metal plate, fix it at the center and spray some fine sand particles on it.
Using a violin bow, gently excite any edge of the plate to magically witness these beautiful normal mode patterns ( known as Chladni patterns/figures ) forming on the plate.
Also notice that by pinching the plate at different points, the pattern obtained changes.
There is a whole lot of physics that goes behind such a simple phenomenon and I dare say we understand it completely. There are lots of questions on these figures that we have no answer for!
Hope this helps with your presentation. Have a good one!
A Middleground 