Every year, my family celebrates the eight days of Hanukkah with eight fun experiments. We’re at it again this year, starting with a balloon rocket experiment. It’s an easy, playful way to demonstrate Newton’s third law of motion. It’s also a good bridge to talking about air pressure, thrust, velocity, and a gateway to a host of other interesting physics experiments.
The instructions for this experiment are simple (materials are in bold):
- Inflate a balloon and tape a drinking straw to it.
- Let the balloon deflate.
- Tape a thin string to one chair and feed the free end of the string through the straw.
- Tape the free end of the string to another chair and pull the string taught.
- Re-inflate the balloon, and pinch the end, but don’t tie it.
- Release!
- Repeat!
Watch our demonstration in the video above to see how it’s done!
What a fun gift!