For our first experiment in this book we played with Steve Spangler’s Windbags. They are eight foot long tubes of plastic. I pulled out two colors from the package.
I gave Christopher, my brother, the red windbag. We unrolled it and I tied one end in a simple knot. I told my brother to breath air into the bag and that I would time how long it would take him to blow it up fully and that I would count how many breaths he took.
After he had fully blown the windbag up, it took him 36 seconds and 15 full breaths to fill the bag.
Now taking the blue bag, I told Christopher I could do it in one breath! Knowing that this is a Steve Spangler experiment I think he knew that I had a trick up my sleeve… and he was right. Taking the open end of the tube, I opened it up with my fingers and placed my mouth about ten inches away. Taking a deep breath, blew into the bag. But it filled only half way, so I took another breath and within four seconds the bag was full!
With two blown up eight foot tubes of air it was to hard to resist….. ENGUARDE!
(Queue epic music) Good and evil…… But who is which? Think Star Wars!!
Use the force, Cranberry Boy!
As the gallant battle continued, Melissa’s weapon deflated and was once again beaten!
Ok, back to science. Why did the bag fill up faster? Well you may of heard of Bernoulli's Principle which states that fast moving air is surrounded by an area of low pressure or, more specifically, atmospheric pressure. So the air around the low pressure is dragged into the low pressure zone and pushed into the bag by the air of my lungs. Science is so useful!
For our first WOW-rating, I will rate this one at a 5. A solid “Let’s do it again” rating.
That wraps it up for our first experiment in “Fire Bubbles and Exploding Toothpaste”. I am planning on doing another one tomorrow. See you then!
