Do you have Superhuman breath power like the Man of Steel? or maybe you can Huff n Puff like the Big Bad Wolf!
Take this test with your friends and see who has the power to ‘blow the house down’.
Materials
paper
1.25L or similar empty PET drink bottle
Lungs full of air!
Minimal risk, but make sure you are blowing and NOT breathing in!
Tear some paper and crunch it into a small ball that is 3/4 the size of the mouth of the bottle.
Place the bottle on its side and the paper ball inside the bottle mouth.
Place your mouth level with the bottle and blow as hard as you can to see if you can move the paper inside the bottle.
Keep trying and see if blowing at different strengths will push the paper ball inside the bottle.
Check out the ‘Wacky Science’ video of this experiment. It is currently ‘In Production’, so check back soon…..
Although you may think the bottle is empty, it is NOT. It is FULL of air molecules. These molecules are flying about inside the bottle taking up space and produce pressure inside the bottle.
When you try to blow the paper into the bottle, there is NO space for it to fit AND for the air inside the bottle to come out.
What does happen, however, is the air you blow travels along the sides of the bottle. This fast moving air behind the paper (coming out of your mouth) produces a LOW pressure region. The high pressure region inside the bottle pushes the paper ball out of the bottle towards your mouth instead.
Pesky Bernoulli Principle working against you…… foiled again.
Molecules:
Pressure:
Bernoulli’s Principle: