What We Learned Today - Jet Engine

This come from the book "101 great science experiments by Neil Ardley".

Justin saw this one in the book and just wanted to do it. In fact he insisted for the next two hours that we go home right now so that he can do it. We of course insisted that we had our things to do first, so we ran our errands and eventually headed home.

One blue balloon attached to a straw on a string. He's ready to let go.

and so he did...the end result.. and boy...did it ever zip fast. Just like a jet engine!

Once we ran through that a couple of times it was time for the boy to just experiment with a balloon and tape and other such stuff. And Experiment he did....First he asked for a tied up balloon... and then he whacked it back and forth a couple of times. The he changed the tape. We went from packing tape to masking tape. and instead of two pieces, he used three. That held the way he wanted it too.

So then he went to the kitchen where he retrieved a straw and a q-tip. I wondered "HUH? what is he up to now?"He proceeded to stick the straw in his mouth and blow the Q-tip at the balloon. He did this about 5 times with an unhappy "AW" being the result. I finally asked him what he was doing. He demonstrated with spinning the balloon all the way around the string. So I asked "why don't you think it's working". His response "It's not heavy enough."

So he decided next time to blow the q-tip into dad's ear and just chortled. :)

Next change in plan.

He built a bumper

and then he built a glider.

and now all the bunnies in bunny town are happy because they can safely hang on and zip down the string. The bumper will give them a nice soft landing so they don't get bumped off. :) All is well. :)

His final chortle of this experiment time was to jam the q-tip into the straw and then say "mommy, blow in this". When I couldn't get it out, he laughed. :) He's a fun, silly lad.