Another balloon experiment!
This one is fun! Have you ever noticed that dark spot on the top of the balloon when you blow it up? That’s going to be very important here in a minute. I take a bamboo skewer and I cover it with dawn soap, I am using it as a lubricant.
Being very gentle with a twisting motion, I pushed the pointy end of the skewer into that dark spot of the balloon.
It was so funny seeing my mom taking pictures and trying to cover her ears at the same time!
Just as I thought the balloon would pop, the skewer punctured through and the balloon was still intact!
Pretty cool, right? But we are not done yet! Now it is time to push the skewer straight across through the other side. Because the side were you tie off the balloon is dark as well.
Here we go…
Then………
Voila!! That balloon has been impaled and is alive!!!
It wont be for long though.
Small amounts of air was escaping, but it won’t pop.
The reason the dark spot is so important is because those two areas is where there is the least stress on the balloon. But if we tried to do this through the middle of the balloon, it will surely pop! Do you want to see the stress areas on the balloon more closely? Try this! Take a marker and put dots all over the balloon then blow it up with air! See what happens.
As I said, you cant put the skewer through the middle, but lets try this! I put a piece of tape on another balloon, but I put it right on the side.
Then, I took a thumb tack and…..
HA HA! I was so happy when it worked. I was honestly really frightened by that second part with the tack, I had never done it before and I really wasn’t sure if it was going to work. But how did it work? I am not completely sure myself but here is my guess. When you pop a balloon by puncturing it, it shreds from the point you hit. Now the tape holds the hole together and the balloon does not shred via popping. Do you have any hypotheses?
The WOW-rating for this one is a 6. I had a lot of fun!
