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Atal Tinkering Labs ATL

Soap Powered Boat Experiment

The movement of the soap powered boat has combination of three principles.   Surface Tension 1) All liquids have a little thing scientist call surface tension! Water molecules are strongly attracted to each other and stick close together. This creates a strong but flexible “skin” on the water’s surface, which is able to support small insects and materials like our paper boat on their surface.   2) Isaac Newton’s third law of motion says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The movement of the soap provides a ‘pushing force’ backward into the water surface as the…

Water Bottle Flip physics

Angular momentum + Centrifugal force + water bottle= SUCCESS   I’m sure any kid in school that doesn’t live in a snow cave, has try the water bottle challenge.   Also known “The flip,” as it will henceforth be known, all begins with a flick of the wrist, generating a specific force called angular momentum,   Angular momentum is very similar to the classical sense of momentum, where an object moving will not change its motion unless acted upon by another force. With angular momentum, the same concept is applied to rotation.   As centrifugal force keeps the water at…

Cartesian diver Experiment

The Cartesian diver, named after French philosopher and scientist René Descartes, works because of several factors.   When you squeeze the bottle, the pressure on the water pushes on the pocket of air inside the pipette. You can see the level of the water in the diver rise as you squeeze the bottle. As the water level inside the diver goes up, it compresses the air above it into a smaller space. This demonstrates that gases are considerably more compressible than liquids.   As the water level rises in the diver, it becomes less buoyant and the diver sinks. As…

Whiskey & Water Experiment

Most people think of this as a trick, but their is Science behind this. Whiskey is lighter than water (the better the whiskey, the better this works). The lighter whiskey will slowly trickle upwards to the top of the water’s shot glass, while the water trickles down. It’s a really neat looking effect! After 10 minutes(my video was fast forward), the two drinks will have completely swapped places.  

Making a Rainbows Experiment – Activity

A rainbow displays the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet in respective order. Other things as well just like mist, dew and spray can cause its formation. To explain it further, when light strikes the surface of a water drop, it changes speed thus causing it to bend.   It is refracted as it enters the water and then refracts again as it leaves the droplet. The outcome is light being reflected in varying angles, creating a rainbow.   Light travels in varying waves where the length of each would depend upon the color. When light retracts,…

Sink of Float Coke and Diet Coke Experiment

For context, the Food and Drug Administration recommends that adults consume a maximum of 50 grams of added sugar per day. The World Health Organization recommends 25 grams of sugar per day, half that. Have a can of Coke and your done for the day.   And why are we talking about grams? “Americans use teaspoons,” said Jim O’Hara, the director of health promotion policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. “We’ve argued they should put it in teaspoons.”   This important bit of information is your key to converting grams into teaspoons. Four grams…

FASTEST Rubber Chicken Bone Experiment

If you soak chicken bones in vinegar, the vinegar will react with the calcium in the bones and weaken them so that they will become soft and rubbery, as if they had come from a rubber chicken. Vinegar is a mild acid, which breaks down calcium. CLR just does it a lot faster.   It is the calcium in your bones that makes them hard and strong. As you age, you may deplete the calcium faster than you replace it. If too much calcium is lost from your bones, they may become brittle and susceptible to breaking.   Exercising and…

Straw Wrapper Wiggle

When drop water on the wrapper, the water molecules will try to get as close as it can to the surface of the paper. And since water molecules are also attracted to one another, it will drag its friends along. This is called capillary action and is why the water travels along the wrapper. The wrapper wiggles and stretches out as the water moves because as its fibers absorb water they swell and straighten out.  

Water to Cranberry juice Experiment

Start off with ….Out of sight of your audience, add about one teaspoon of sodium carbonate powder (Washing Soda) which is Baking Soda that you preheat to 400 degrees (204 c). Then pour in 16oz (pint) of water in a pitcher and mix until solution appears clear. This will be the “plain water”. With two clean cups, add about 10 drops of phenolphthalein solution (pH indicator) to the bottom of one glass. This will become the “Cranberry juice” glass.   Now In front of your audience, pour some of the “plain water” into the empty cup. Next, say some magic…

Steam Powered Vacuum Experiment

Fill a glass bottle with enough water so when its on its side it won’t spill out. Then microwave for a 1:30 on high. The bottle is going to be VERY HOT! Use caution and use hot pads. Make sure to wear safety glasses!   Already with a bowl of water on the table, pour the water out of the bottle into the bowl, then put the tip of the bottle into the bowl of water straight up. Hold on tight as the vacuum has a huge amount of force.   When we microwave the bottle and water it becomes…

Pick up a Ice cube with a string and salt experiment

When salt is sprinkled over ice it melts. However, when it is used in such a small amount, like in our experiment, the water around the ice freezes again quickly, as salt lowers the freezing point of water to below O degrees.   This means that the string gets trapped as the water around it refreezes, making it stick to the ice.   A great example of how road crews use salt is they put salt on the roads in the winter to prevent roads from getting icy. The salt lowers the melting point of ice and stops roads from…

Boiling Water with Ice Experiment

Icing the part of the bottle with air in it slightly lowers the pressure, because the air molecules rattle around less when they’re colder. Thats what causes a little bit of water to boil, until the pressure builds back up.   There’s a much more important effect. The bottle mostly has water vapor, not air, up in the top part of the bottle. Icing it cools it enough so that there the vapor condenses back from a gas to a liquid. That lowers the pressure a lot, causing more boiling. So with the main part of the bottle is very…

Pepsi (Coke) and Milk Experiment

The reaction of phosphoric acid to proteins in the milk – they are cut and causes a substance to be deposited in solid form from a solution.   It is a reaction of the Phosphoric Acid contained in the soft drink to the milk. Phosphoric Acid molecules attach to the milk giving them more density and separate out while the remaining liquid that makes up the milk and soft drink now being lighter floats on top. The solid matter is basically milk that has been curdled by the addition of the more acidic soda.   Both items are acidic but…

How to Stop a Soda Can from Exploding Experiment

Shaking an unopened can of soda causes bubbles of carbon dioxide gas (CO2) to cover the inside walls of the can. At some point we all have had or seen someone with a can that exploded as it was opened.   When you open a shaken can, the pressure in the liquid drops quickly and all the bubbles or so dioxide gas bubbles increases instantly. And it shoots out everywhere! The quickly expanding bubbles force any liquid above them out of the can as a foaming mess.   The myth is tapping the top of the can before opening it…

Freeze water in one second experiment

Everyone knows that water freezes at 32 degrees (0 °C) – or does it? When water freezes, it needs a nucleus in order for the solid crystals to form and become ice. Water is typically full of particles and impurities which have no problem kicking off the crystallization process. However, purified water by definition doesn’t have those impurities. With nothing for the water molecules to latch onto, purified water can be supercooled as far as -40°C.   The energy generated from firm hit on the side of the bottle forces the supercooled water molecules to form a crystal in a…

Self Moving Toothpick Experiment

Toothpicks are made of dry wood. When I broke them in the middle, the wood fragments inside compress. Once we add water to the center circle of the star, capillary action causes the water to be absorbed into the toothpicks.   The water moves inside the dry toothpick from the starting point of the crack and continues along the length to the pointed tips. The capillary action or water traveling inside the toothpick causes the toothpicks to straighten out. The set up with 10 points creates a 5 point star.  

Harry Potter Butter beer Recipe

Trivia question answer below in comments: Does anyone know how much Butter beer cost at the Hog’s Head?   “Why don’t we go and have a butterbeer in the Three Broomsticks, it’s a bit cold, isn’t it?” – Hermione Granger inviting Harry   Butterbeer at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter could be served either cold with a taste similar to cream soda or frozen as a slush with a butterscotch-like foam on top (My favorite). One may also purchase it either in a regular plastic cup or in a collectible mug. As of 12 December, 2012, over five million…

Red Cabbage Juice: A Homemade pH Indicator Experiment

Red cabbage contains a pigment molecule called flavin (an anthocyanin). This water-soluble pigment is also found in apple skin, plums, poppies, cornflowers, and grapes.   Red cabbage juice contains a natural pH indicator that changes colors according to the a acidity of the solution. This is very easy to make and exhibits a wide range of colors.   You can make it a couple different ways, one by chopping up the red cabbage into strips adding 2 cups of hot water and then blending it and then pouring into a coffee filter. This is give you a dark purple indicator…

Wave in a bottle Experiment – Activity

Now move the bottle back and forth, side to side and you will notice you have a wave in the bottle!   The waves will be bigger at one end of the bottle and smaller at the other.   The reason is because Your bottle wave is like an ocean wave. Water moves up and down and doesn’t go forward as the wave goes through the water.   The friction between water and wind makes a wave. Longer waves travel faster than shorter ones and go further before friction makes them disappear.   Our planet waves also happen when our…

Kaye effect Experiment

The Kaye effect occurs when a thin stream of shampoo is poured onto a surface. Though most of the time it just clusters in a pile, the surprising effect occasionally fires off an arcing streamer! The phenomenon ends when the ‘dancing’ jet hits the primary jet and suddenly collapses.   These streamers of fluid can actually fly quite far — the ones in my initial experiment were traveling up to 8 inches, leaving the bowl entirely and almost hit my camera. This is named after its first observer A. Kaye, who could offer no explanation for this behavior.   So…

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