Spinning Into Science: Circular Motion Goes Retro!

Let’s take it back a few decades! Before everything was streamed, music lived on CDs, cassette tapes, and—going even further back—record players. In physics, we’re exploring circular motion, and those old-school turntables make the perfect real‑world connection.

Students investigated how motion changes with radius by taking measurements at different points along a spinning platform. From there, they calculated tangential velocity, centripetal acceleration, and angular velocity. It’s the same kind of physics engineers had to consider when designing spinning media, where the read head moves closer to and farther from the center of rotation.

Physics is fun!