34/54 Pop Bottle Music

  This experiment, I have to say, seemed normal to me. Maybe because I did this experiment often growing up. Nevertheless, it was in the book so I had to do it. But I won’t complain! An experiment is an experiment.

First off I grabbed three glass bottles from my experiment kit. The first one I filled up with water (I colored it so you could see it), the other one I left empty, and the third bottle I will use in one minute. Taking a spoon, I tapped it to the bottle and then to the other.

  

It looks like I am laughing there.. its because I was!! I felt kind of silly just standing there tapping the bottles back and forth while my mom takes pictures!

What do you think happened? Well you might think that the bottle made a sound and you would be right! But do you think that they would make the same sound? I encourage you to try and see!! RIGHT NOW! Use your glass cups. It will take two seconds to find out!

What did you notice? Were they the same or different? Different! Why do you think that happened? We will find out in just a minute!

I filled the third bottle half way full with water (and colored it) and put it in between the other two and repeated the process with my spoon.

 

What kind of sound did the half filled glass make? Is it higher, lower, or in the middle of the others? If you ran to do it yourself, then you know that the sound was in between the other two sounds. The purple bottle high, empty bottle low, green bottle somewhere in the middle.

What if I got many glasses and made a musical scale? That is just what I did.

I did not have 5 glass bottles but these plastic ones worked just fine. I tapped the bottles with the spoon and it didn’t make the same kind of sound with the glass bottles, which is expected. Why? Plastic and Glass are very different materials. Of course they are not going to sound the same. The bottles made a clum sound while the glass make a cling sound. I still enjoyed it though! There is a really cool aspect to these bottles! Have you ever had a bottle of some sort and blew over the top of it? If you haven’t, you are missing a vital part of your childhood. Hours of musical entertainment in your own hands! By blowing air over the top you make the air in the bottle vibrate making an awesome sound. I blew over the bottles and switched from bottle to bottle. I went from green (far right) to yellow (far left) and as I progressed from one to the other the sound lowered! As the liquid lowered so did the sound. But when you tap the bottle, the sound grew higher as the liquid lowered.

What’s happening?

Well when you tap the bottle, it vibrates and that vibration makes the sound. When you add water, the sound is lower. That’s because the water makes the bottle not vibrate as much, thus, lowering the sound. But what about blowing across the top of the bottle? Why was it opposite?

Well, I am going to leave that for you to find out! I can’t hog all of the fun!

Afterwards, Mom suggested to me to ramp it up a little….. I pulled out the vacuum.

 

Fast moving air and bottles with water……… Let it begin!

The vacuum made the bottles sing like never before! It was fun. Although the yellow bottle wanted to join the dust bunnies, it worked perfectly.

Now for the WOW-rating. I have to be honest, I’d give it a 2- Fun to do just once. But the vacuum made it much more interesting!

33/54 Squeeze-Bottle Straw Rocket

With a word like “rocket” in the title, you know you are going to have a great time! First, I needed a Kool-Aid bottle and I needed to drink some Kool-Aid. I hadn’t had Kool-Aid in years, having it again was not exactly yummy.

No offense to all of the little guys out there, I thought it tasted like cough medicine (YUCK!). But I know every little kid would enjoy it as the treat it is. My brother drank the rest for me(Yay!).

I had grabbed two straws, one bigger than the other. I took the smaller straw and stuck it into the Kool-Aid bottle. Taking some modeling clay, I squeezed a little bit around the lip of the bottle and around the straw for a good seal and a little bit of support.

 

I took the bigger straw and pushed one of the ends into some clay to plug it up.

For safety reasons, I shoved a piece of Styrofoam on that same end.

  

Now all I had to do was slip the bigger straw over the smaller one and my rocket was ready to go.

Yes! I get to launch a rocket!

All we have to do is point it away from any living being and squeeze the bottle!

I took my stance and squeezed the bottle really fast and PHOOH! It went across the hall!! Take a look.

It went far for a little straw! It was so much fun! I did it again and again. Who wouldn’t?

I did something similar with some kids at Explora. The kids made and decorated their own straw and put it on a devise. It was basically a bike-tire foot pump with a medal tube attached to it. They slipped the straw onto the tube and stomped on the lever to send the straw flying across the playground. TONS of fun for everyone! What was really cool was we took this devise to the New Mexico State Fair on Science and Technology Day and hundreds of kids got to experience this along with other Explora activities! I had so much fun.

Anyway, the big question of every experiment.. How? Well, this one is almost self explanatory. It involves Newton’s Third Law of Motion. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. The straw stays in place until the bottle is squeezed. The action is the air in the bottle rushing out of the smaller straw then hitting the clay plug at the end. The reaction is the straw launching from the force of the air.

The WOW-rating for this one is 4. Just under a “Let’s do it again”.

We have one more experiment in this chapter of “Air-mazing”. I will not reveal the name of the next chapter yet, but I can tell you that it will get messy!

32/54 Mysterious Water Suspension

On this beautiful Labor Day, I woke up excited to get back to my science adventure! I apologize for not doing any experiments over the summer. You would probably think that I would get more done over the summer than over the school year but this was not the case. I am an intern at the Explora Science Museum and in summer we do camps all day, every week. I found myself working 40 hours a week, thus, I had no time to do my experiments. My summer there was wonderful having new experiences, learning, creating, and meeting marvelous people. I hope your summer was just as enjoyable! After the summer was over, I needed a couple of weeks to get into the swing of things for the school year. Now, here I am! Let’s get to the experiment.

This experiment can be thought of as a magic trick, yet not. It is SCIENCE!! I grabbed a simple jelly jar and took just the rim of the lid and twisted it on.

I filled the jar with water. I colored the water blue so that it would be easier for you guys to see.

Now we are set!

I could do this experiment over the sink but I am a scientist! I love to use test subjects. “Oh, brother?”. My little brother, Christopher, had graciously accepted to be my personal guinea pig like he has in the past! Holding the jar over his head I placed a index card on top of the jar.

I know what you are thinking, “Oh, this one! She’s done this already!!” I know I did, just bear with me and you will see the difference! With my hand holding the index card firmly, I flipped the whole thing over and, well, you know the rest!

As you can see, the index card stayed in place. But here is the part that is different than experiment number 24 from the last book. I grabbed the index card and I slowly pulled it away.

“GASP!!” is the word you are all saying. It looks good so far, but what about all the way?…. Christopher’s expression is one of fear.

TA-DA!!!

You may notice that on Christopher’s shoulder his shirt is wet. That is because when I pulled away the card, a little bit of water dripped on it. Then something unintentional happened, I accidentally tilted the jar.

 

It turns out that tilting the jar results in Niagara Falls.

 

Poor Chris….

Now some of you are still picking your jaws up off the floor but others are thinking, “There is something you are not telling us.” And you would be right. I haven’t been totally honest with you. Check out what I put in the lid.

 

Bingo! Plastic screen mesh.

Hey, if I told you first thing then it wouldn’t have been as shocking, right?

I wanted to try something that I had seen before but never did myself. I refilled the jar with water (this time it is not dyed blue) and took some toothpicks and tried to stick them through the holes of the mesh.

I did get a few in but I kept jiggling the jar and pushing on the mesh which resulted in, you guessed it, mini monsoon for Christopher.

With Christopher already pretty wet and he actually expressed the good feeling of the shower, I got rid of the rest of the water.

 

WAHAHAHAHA!!

Ok, with the fun on stand-by, let’s get to the science of the matter. So why did the index card stay in place before I removed it? The Atmospheric Pressure is greater on the outside of the jar than the pressure on the inside of the jar as we learned with experiment number 24. So the bigger question is, how did the water stay within the jar when the card was removed? As speculated, it’s surface tension. It’s that beautiful membrane that is on the surface of the water that is created by cohesion (the attraction of similar molecules toward each other). The water stays in the jar because the water molecules stay together (through cohesion) and forms a membrane between each tiny opening. The reason the water rushes out if you tip the jar is that air finds its way into the jar letting the water escape!! This is such cool and shocking science!

The WOW-rating for this experiment is a good 8.

I really enjoyed this one. Especially the part where I torture my poor brother. I know I am a horrible older sister!

I will be getting back to you all very soon! Have a great holiday!

31/54 The Quick-Pour Soda Bottle Race

Today’s experiment was a little bit on the irritating side. I grabbed a one liter soda bottle and filled it almost to the top with water. Then I turned the bottle over and, with a stop watch, I timed how long it took for all of the water to exit the bottle. Then I recorded my data.

I did this three times. Why three times? Because three is a great number! So after doing the three glub-glub tests, it was time for the vortex tests. Filling the bottle, I needed to cover the lid, turn it over, and then do a quick and fast swirl to the bottle. I am trying to make a vortex. It was not working! I tried different techniques but it would glub until the end where it had a beautiful swirling vortex.

It was fantastic when the water stopped glubbing. Because it was glubbing, the tests were fallible. I tried filling the bottle half way and it was a little better but not perfect. I think it was the way I was doing it, not right. I did not know what to do, so I just went with it. After gathering my data, I averaged it and here are the results.

The data says that the vortex method made the water flow out slower. Which is the OPPOSITE of what was supposed to happen. You see in the middle of the vortex there is a hole that allows air to enter into the bottle and lets the water flow out without glubbing; compared to the glubbing test where the bottle has to take that extra effort to bring in air slows the process down. So why is my data wrong? I think the answer is human error. There are a few variables in this experiment that would make it easy for the data to be fallible. One is that the timer could have ended or started late. Or started early. Another is each time I had to fill the bottle with water the water levels could be different even though I tried my best to get the water levels as close as possible. My technique with the swirling could be very fallible indeed. I think that is why my data was so incorrect.

Anyway I love the beauty of the vortex! Why don’t we add some color?

Using Mr. Spangler’s product, I attached a piece that connects two bottles together. It has a hole allowing the water to pass through.

 

Filling the bottle with water, I put lamp oil, that I colored blue, in the bottle with the water. Attaching the other bottle, I did the same swirling motion. The lamp oil gets pulled into the vortex and makes the vortex much easier to see!

A little fun and colorful activity! But here is the grand finale! Check out our bottle now.

With this big baby, I need to bring out the big guns, my brother, because it was just a little heavy.

  With me holding the water up and helping to stabilize, my brother held most of the weight. But first…. we just had to do it.

Now, with some team work, we got the vortex to work large scale!!

   

 

It was fun, we got wet too! But my little brother also dumped a part of the water on my lab coat. I am still trying to dry off.

A great way to end a bit of a epic fail day! For our WOW-rating I give the it a 4. A little less than “Let’s do it again”.

30/54 Windbag Wonders

 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!