Commercial distribution is prohibited without the written permission of Tufts University and in the case of the movies in the MOS collection without the additional written permission of the Boston Museum of Science. The Winter Meeting of the American Association of Physics teachers was held at the Hyatt Regency hotel in New Orleans in 1998. The hotel's glass-walled elevators inspired Bob Teese and Priscilla Laws to rent a video camera and start filming the motions of the elevators. With the help of Pat Cooney, Dennis Kuhl and Mark Luetzelschab, Bob filmed the motion of a ball tossed in an elevator both while it was moving at a constant speed and while it was accelerating. This provides students with an opportunity to ask what ball motions will remain constant and what will change in a transformation from the elevator's reference frame to the hotel's reference frame.
Students can also study how the elevator accelerates when it starts up and slows down.
The first two movies were made inside the elevator as it moves at roughly a constant speed. The third movie shows the elevator accelerating upward. These movies were made at night so the passenger throwing a tennis ball can be seen through the half-silvered glass window of the elevator. Each frame of the movie was retouched so the locations of the elevator and ball can be seen clearly in spite of strong reflections in the window glass. To preview movies in a new window, single click the link.