Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Bread Bag Blowing Battle - A Low Pressure Science Lesson

We had a bread bag blowing battle, tonight, following a suggestion from Eric Muller's While You're Waiting for the Food to Come: Experiments and Tricks That Can Be Done at a Restaurant, the Dining Room Table, or Wherever Food is Served.

As you might imagine, there was a science trick involved, to make it extra fun. But first, a word of warning: bread bags are terrible suffocation hazards, so do this only with adult supervision.

Standing back to back, I told the kids to blow up their bags, as fast as they could. But, I let T in on the secret. While, G was blowing the bag up, by holding it up to her mouth, like a balloon, T held his bag out from his face, and blew in the direction of the opening.


T, filled his bag much faster than G. Blowing into the bag from a distance, made a low pressure column of air, that drew the air around it, into the bag, too. Meanwhile, G was filling her bag slowly, using only the air from her lungs.


We also discovered, that bread bags make pretty good balloons for bopping around the backyard, when the science lesson is through.



It's great to be a homeschooler.

4 comments:

Christy Killoran said...

I never would have thought it would work out that way. Interesting!

I can't wait to try it.

Ticia said...

Interesting. I'm thinking most of those are not ones I would want my kids to try in restaurants....... Just guessing.

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I agree with Christie - I learned something new today. I loved the first picture of your two oldest (?)

An Almost Unschooling Mom said...

Raising a Happy Child - Yes, those are my two oldest. I figured they were the least likely to try to put the bags over their heads.

Ticia - There were a few things like crinkling a straw wrapper, and watching it grow with drop of soda, that I have seen people do in restaurants - but most of the experiments are on the messy, or large size, and not good for finer dining. The bread bag thing, was meant to be done with sub-sandwich bags. I guess these would be okay for busy fast food places.