Easy Science Experiments to do at Home W_ Science Explanations

Today I'm going to show you some experiments that you could easily do at home. So pay close attention because you're about to have a lot of fun and learn some really cool things along the way. First experiment, we're going to blow up a balloon. And then take a skewer stick. This is what you may have eaten shish kebab on or you use it for marshmallows over a campfire. Carefully look for the bottom of the balloon where it's darkest in color because that's where most of the rubber is. And when it looks like I'm about to pop the balloon, watch what happens as I put the stick directly in that hole. It's in and the balloon didn't pop and now you just exit the opposite side where you tied it. And here you have a balloon shish kebab. Don't eat it like a marshmallow but it's cool to see how it didn't pop and you see the stick going all the way through. The reason that works is because a balloon is made up of polymers. Polymers is like a long chain of molecules. So when you put the stick through, it seals itself around the stick and protects all the air from coming out. It makes a seal around the stick. How cool is that? When I take the stick out, the air will slowly start to come out the hole and deflate the balloon over time. It's a small hole but air is rushing out of it and it's getting smaller and smaller. I don't know if you can hear it. I'll put it to my microphone. And this balloon will slowly be gone. Now if I did it the other way, if I tried to stick in, if I tried to put the stick in the other way, boom, it'll pop. So you have to make sure it's on bottom of the balloon. Now this guy wants to be next in line because we're going to use the same science principle but add a little water to the bag. We're going to make it a little more exciting, a little more risky because I'm going to soak my entire floor if this science principle doesn't work. But I know it does work so I'm not worried. And here's how you could do it also. Simply take a bag, fill it up with water. I'm hanging it from the ceiling but you could hold it as well. And then grab some pencils. And it's going to work the same way as it did before. But this time, you don't want to go slowly through. You want to quickly jab it through the bag. And look, no water is coming out for the same reason no water came out of the balloon. The bag is a plastic and plastic is a polymer just like the rubber was. The bag is sealing itself around the pencil. How amazing is that? And what's cool is you can see the pencil through the water. Let's do it with a couple more pencils and see just how many we can get inside before it starts leaking out. Now as long as you do it quickly and fully through the bag, the science will work every single time. If you only get through one end of the bag and get stuck in the middle, the water is going to start leaking out because you didn't have a perfect seal. So if I just go through here and make a hole on this end but the pencil doesn't go through, it's going to start leaking out. And we can just keep putting more pencils in and more pencils in. Just make sure you go through both sides. I almost went through the entire bag over there. This is fun. Challenge your family and see how many pencils you can get through but just have a mop on and in case you lose the challenge, you're going to have to clean up the mess. But if you follow the science principles, it'll work every single time. Quick and straight through the bag. Look at that. Look how many pencils are in here. And there you have it. Now when you take a pencil out, here's what happens when the pencil comes out. It starts leaking and now I have to get the mop. Alright our next experiment is a cool one. Now all you need is a candle. All you need is to light a candle. Let's get the lights down. And then blow it out. And what you're going to do is you're going to light the wisp of what looks like smoke coming up. Watch. See how that lit? It traveled down the trail. Now the reason that works is because when you blow out the candle, the heat vaporizes the candle wax and that candle wax is briefly in the air. So when you light it, you're not lighting smoke, you can't light smoke. But the candle wax is igniting and traveling down and relighting the candle. Let's do another one of that, but close up. Moving on to our next experiment. Here's how to make it. Take an empty plastic bottle and just slowly start putting holes around it with a push pin. I do about 15 all around the bottle. Doesn't matter where you put it. Just try to make it in a straight line around or it doesn't even have to be in a straight line. Just put it around the bottle. I do about 15 holes around this area on the bottom and then fill it up with water. Now when you fill it up with water, you're going to notice the water coming out the sides. That's because air is coming in with it and pushing it out the holes. But if you cap it off quickly, there's no air to get inside the bottle and there's no air pressure pushing out the water from the bottle. That's why even though the bottle has tons of holes around it, no water is leaking out. The couple of drips you see is just from me filling up the bottle from earlier. If you squeeze it though, yeah, you'll give someone a shower. But what you could do is give it to someone and say, I dare you, I bet you, you can't open this bottle. Just be prepared that they are going to get wet when it happens because when you open the bottle, air pressure comes in, air goes in through the top and pushes the water down and out the holes. That is an air pressure science experiment that you could have fun with. Moving on to our next experiment. All right, I think you're going to like this next one. Did you know that you can make a snowstorm out of a bunch of diapers? Yeah, clean diapers. You take the inside of it because inside there is a polymer called sodium polyacrylate. Did you see all that powder that just came out? That is the snow powder I'm talking about. See all this powder over here? I have five cups of it right here, sodium polyacrylate, and it absorbs water. It absorbs itself over 500 times the amount of water that you pour into it. Each part of the polymer absorbs 500 times and then it expands because it is absorbing so much. But you see, it keeps everything dry, which is what a diaper does. They use this in fake snow parks, well, real snow parks, but places that are too warm to have real snow, they'll make this snow so people can go skiing and snowboarding. Now polymers are linked molecules, like a chain, like we spoke about earlier with the pencils in the bag, with the balloon. So it links and connects to each other as it absorbs the water, otherwise it would just turn into a soggy mess. But each molecule absorbs 10 times, 50 times, up to 500 times its weight in water, which is why it expands so much. Now I want to see if we can actually make colorful snow, so we're going to put food coloring into the water. Here's some blue, here's some red, here's some green. Do you think it'll change the color of the snow? And here is some yellow. What do you think, guys? Let's mix this up in three, two, one. Will it work? And there you have it. Our blue snow is erupting. We are having rainbow snow here. Red, green, and yellow. Here's the red, here's the green, here's the yellow. Here is our rainbow snowstorm. And you can actually do this by pulling out the inside of a diaper, cutting it open and getting the powder. And it's called sodium polyacrylate. That is the chemical inside. It is completely not toxic. It's a polymer. It's safe. Just don't eat it. But it's completely not toxic, so you don't have to worry about it, and you can have a lot of fun with it. Or you can just buy your own ready-made instant snow and pour water to it. And the cool thing about it, if you take this powder and you leave it out on some paper towels spread out in a nice, dry place, over the course of a few days to a week or two, it'll go back to its original powder form, and then you can do it all over again. The only thing is, if you colored it, it'll stay that color. I hope you enjoyed today's experiments, and now we are going to end with a giant liquid nitrogen cloud. I'm going to do that. You can't do that at home, but I figured you want to see something incredible because this is incredible science, guys. So let me show it to you, and the way that's going to work is, you know when you have hot and cold coming together, it creates steam, right? When weather, even water, that's how we create steam. When hot water gets into the cold atmosphere, it lets out steam. But what if I have hot water and the world's coldest water, well, not water, but liquid nitrogen, negative 320 degrees or so, negative 312 to 320, negative 300 degrees below zero. Can you imagine how cold that is? Mixing with boiling hot water coming together, creating an explosion, and the explosion is an actual cloud. Let's head outside and see it, and we will say goodbye after that. I hope you guys enjoyed. Thanks so much for watching. Let's get to the cloud. What happens if you add some hot water to liquid nitrogen? A little cloud happens. What happens if we add a ton of hot water to a ton of liquid nitrogen? You get a giant cloud.