Here we have a clip from the excellent movie adaptation of Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. In addition to engaging and nuanced performances by Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfus, and Iain Glen, the script is full of thought-provoking metaphysical introspection, and some delightful physics introspection as well. It's well worth renting.

When is a daredevil stunt jump actually a "jump" and when does it become a form of ill-advised rocket flight? While we enjoy the dramatic and circus-esque musical soundtrack in the video, let's also appreciate some interesting physics issues relevant to Kenny Powers' unsuccessful jump. I'm not sure how carefully they thought this one through, but I suspect at least they must have recognized that their "souped-up" Lincoln Continental had to be under rocket power not only during the approach and up the ramp but during the jump (flight) as well.

A few weeks back we looked at the phenomenon of resonance with oscillating metronomes. As a follow-up to that meditative and Zen-like video, we've included a crystal-clear demonstration of that favorite old opera singer's trick: shattering a wine glass with resonance.

If the passengers on that airplane felt their collective hearts stop for a moment, it wasn't due to the electric current from the lightning strike running through their bodies. In fact, airplanes getting struck by lightning is a fairly common occurrence -- more common than you might realize.

This charming little video demonstrates the principle of resonant frequency using oscillating metronomes. The mechanical wind-up metronomes used worldwide during the dreaded Saturday piano lesson employ an inverted pendulum to keep even time intervals. The resonant frequency of the pendulum is adjusted by moving the mass up and down. Sliding the mass higher up the rod decreases the resonant frequency of the pendulum by increasing its rotational inertia.

While the principle is fairly straightforward, this video is such an endearing representation of the concept of relative motion that we had to share it. Who wouldn't appreciate the lengths they went to do the demonstration, not to mention the dramatic atmosphere of the video!

Skiing off of a 245 foot vertical cliff–looks like fun. It also looks like an insurance disaster in the making. And yet the skiers make it to the other side with nary a scratch. As you doubtless intuitively suspect, they end up ok because of the relatively “soft” snowy landing. As long as the acceleration involved in coming to a stop during impact is not beyond a certain threshold they can survive the fall. According to Newton’s Second Law (F = ma) if you extend the time of impact you reduce the acceleration (a = Δv/Δt) and therefore the force acting on a crazy extreme sport adrenaline junkie. The snow increases both the time and distance over which the collision occurs giving these guys a reasonable chance of walking away alive and without serious internal injuries. So let’s estimate how deep the snow needs to be for a safe landing.

In this video, we see a dramatic demonstration of standing waves patterns, which form when travelling waves constructively and destructively interfere as they pass through one other.