Today I did the anticipated redo of my “Flying Potatoes”. With my new and improved materials in hand, I was confident there would soon be potatoes in my tree.
I cut the potato in half and pushed the pipe into it. Now that my pipe was sharp, it was easy-peasy to plunge it in.
After successfully getting two potato pieces inside the pipe, I headed outside. I felt so confident and optimistic, ready to demonstrate Boyle’s Law.
I positioned my dowel rod and pushed it up, through the pipe moving the potato piece.
To my surprise, the potato piece just fell out the end of the pipe and dropped to the ground.
NO! What happened? I noticed that when I pushed the potato through the pipe, I did not feel any air resistance. That means the air did not compress and that only means one thing, no air seal.
I know that it isn’t the potato. If you look at the potato piece in this picture, it is not a mashed potato like the previous run. The form is nearly perfect.
The dowel rod has no other function than to push the potato pieces. I do not think that it has a part in the failure of the experiment.
So that leaves me with one material, the pipe itself. We felt the inside of the pipe and it was really rough. Thus, there are little tiny marks in the pipe allowing air to pass through.
What am I going to try now? Well first I am going to try to sand the tip of the pipe on the inside. Thus, when I stab the potato, the piece will be cut a bit bigger and grow tight as I push it further inside, creating a tighter seal.
If that is unsuccessful (hopefully not), then I will buy a clear plastic tube. Because it is a different material, it might create a better seal. In the experiment, Steve Spangler said we could use a PVC pipe or the plastic kind of pipe so that we could see what is going on inside. But since I already had PVC in my shed, I just went with it.
This has been a bit of a frustration but this is where I learn the most. I consider this day an………
