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"Under Pressure" Experiments

1. Air Pressure 1 (Balloon/Cup)  | 2. The Cartesian Diver  | 3. The Paper/Bottle Experiment  | 4. The Card and Glass Experiment

5. The Floating Ping Pong Ball  | 6. Floating Ball in a Cup!  | 7. Make a Barometer

Air Pressure 5
(Bernoulli's Principle - Exp. 1)

Experiment: To float a ping pong ball on a cushion of air.

Materials:

You will need:

1 straw
1 ping pong ball
Lots of puff!
 

Method:

What you have to do: 

1) Bend the straw

2) While blowing through the straw, balance the ping pong ball on the flow of air.

3) Try again using a hair dryer - try to balance two or three balls in the same stream of air!

4) If you are really ambitious, try the same experiment using a leaf blower and a beach ball!!
(we will be trying 3 and 4 and will upload our photos here in due course -  watch this space!)

Result: The ball floats for as long as our breath lasts.

Conclusion: The faster moving air from the straw/hairdryer creates a column of lower pressure air. The surrounding air is at a higher pressure and this forces the ball to stay inside the low pressure column.

Sixth Class Experiments