Geek Celebrates Hanukkah With Science: Day One

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!

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