You are probably looking at this title and thinking, “What?”
It’s ok, that’s what I thought too! But you and I both should know by now that these books have made us do a lot of weird things! This should be no different…. or will it?
I filled up my container full of water. Nothing special about it, just good, fresh water. I have two bowling balls, the blue one is 16 pounds and the red one is 7 pounds. The blue one belongs to my dad so we had it on hand. The red one, however, I got from a bowling center. They were throwing it away because it has this big crack!
I just asked them if they had a bowling balls under 12 pounds (you’ll find out why that is important in a little while) that they were throwing away and the kind lady set this beauty in front of me. Because I will be putting this in the water, I covered the crack with a piece of duck tape so that it would not affect my results.
To start the experiment, I carefully set the 16 pound bowling ball into the bucket of water…… Guesses?
You got it…….
Straight to the bottom.
No surprise, right?
I, then, followed the instructions and set the 7 pound ball into the water.
Wait, did you see that right?
Yes, You did! That ball of 7 pounds is floating in water!
How can this be? Well, if you did not know this already, bowling balls have a standard size but they have different weights. How? One word, density. The 7 pound ball is less dense than the water, thus it floats. The 16 pound ball is more dense than the water so it sinks. 12 pounds is kind of the tipping point. Anything greater will sink and anything less will float. 12 pounds, according to the book, will barely float in the water because it is barely less dense than the water. There are some calculations that you could do to measure the exact density of the ball. Pretty cool, huh?
The WOW-rating for this one is a 5. I would love to do this again with various weights of bowling balls but unfortunately I do not have that luxury!
I would like to thank the Isleta Fun Center for proving the red bowling ball for me!
That ends our last experiment in the chapter, “Must-See Science” and on to the big chapter….. “The Super-Secret Teachers-Only Section”!!
