Floating Ball
The power of air allows you to levitate a ball in midair.
The Floating Ball experiment uses amazing principles of air that will sure to amaze everyone,from your science teacher, to your parents, to your neighbors!
Materials used:
1l plastic bottle
straw
ball
How to do the experiment:
Cut the bottle near the top of a 1-liter bottle, roughly where the bottle stops curving and begins to straighten out.
Punch a hole in center of the bottle cap.
The bendable straw should fit the cap hole.
Once you have the perfect bottle cap and hole, screw the cap onto the top of the bottle.
Place the short end of the bendy straw through the hole.
Start blowing into the the straw (the end opposite the bottle) and place the ball over the stream of air.
Much to the surprise of anyone watching, the ball hovers in midair over the bottle. Wow!
HOW DOES IT WORK
The Floating Ball experiment is a wonderful example of Bernoulli’s Principle, the same principle that allows heavier-than-air objects, like airplanes, to fly.
Bernoulli, an 18th century Swiss mathematician, discovered something quite unusual about moving air. He found that the faster air flows over the surface of something, the less the air pushes on that surface. That means that the air pressure on the object is lower than average.
The air from the straw, as you blow through it, produces the levitating ball phenomenon using Bernoulli’s Principle. The fast air moving that you are blowing around the sides of the ball is at a lower pressure than the surrounding, stationary air. If you look closely, you’ll see that the ball wobbles while it is levitating in midair. The ball is attempting to leave the area of low pressure, but the higher air pressure surrounding it forces it back into the low pressure area.
Thank you,
ilearnscience
Comments