This is a very nice experiment and it will definitely wow folks who is not very familiar with physics. Take a match and a balloon, fill balloon with air and burst it with firing match. Nice and loud boom will happen as expected. Take another balloon and fill it with water. Now try to burst this one with your burning match. The truth is — it won’t. Apparently water can absorb a lot of heat and rubber balloon just does not reach temperature high enough to burst. Watch this video, which I found on NASA website if you still don’t believe it. They talk about global warming and the oceans, you can skip that part and watch water balloon at 1:15 right away :-)
This is funny how those guys tell to do it only with adult supervision and safety googles. In my childhood we did tons of crazy stuff without adult supervision and safety googles, but I think it’s better for the kids at the end of the day.
You can also do another similar experiment: make a little pot from paper (cup or jar, whatever it will look like), fill it with a little bit of water and try to boil it on a candle. Apparently you can boil the water in a paper cup without any troubles. Water boils at much lower temperature than required to burn the paper, so it does not let paper to reach burning temperature. Candle transfers energy to the paper and water heating it until water starts to boil. After that temperature remains stable and the excess heat is consumed for evaporating the water.
Do you know any other experiments which are simple to do and can wow kids and far from science people?
Tags: experiment, physics, video
