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Balloon and nut hummer science experiment : Fizzics Education

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Balloon and nut hummer

Balloon and nut hummer

Follow FizzicsEd 150 Science Experiments:

You will need:

  • One Balloon
  • One 8mm metal nut (have different size ones on hand too!)

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Balloon and nut science experiment - materials needed
1 Balloon and nut science experiment - adding a metal nut to a balloon

Insert the nut into the balloon.

2 Balloon and nut science experiment - holding the balloon in one hand

Blow up the balloon and tie its end.

Hold the balloon in one hand at the end you have tied.

3 Balloon and nut science experiment - spinning the metal nut inside the balloon

Gently swirl the balloon around in a circle.

Swirl the balloon faster and slower. What happens?

Your fingers can get in the way here so you may need to hold the balloon higher up. Sometimes holding the balloon from below as well can help.

4 Two students setting up a wooden ramp with balls and pipes
5 Teacher showing how to do an experiment outside to a group of kids.

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– Help students learn how science really works

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Get the Unit of Work on Sound here!

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  • What is frequency?
  • How does sound travel and what does it look like and more!

Includes cross-curricular teaching ideas, student quizzes, a sample marking rubric, scope & sequences & more

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Why Does This Happen?

This experiment works due to the corners of the nut vibrating skin of the balloon. The faster the vibrations, the higher the pitch.

This experiment can also be used to demonstrate that when you sping something, the material moves outwards. Think of washing machines when they enter a spin cycle, the water is sent outwards. The same happens on Gravitrons that you see at amusement park rides, where in this case you’re pushed outwards against the rotating cylinder. This is called rotational inertia, whereby an object with sufficient momentum will tend to keep moving around the outside of a circle due to the centripetal motion of the spinning circle. i.e. the nut tries to escape out of the balloon in a straight line but the balloon’s shape forces it to travel around in a circle.

Variables to test

More on variables here

  • Change the speed of your balloon rotations
  • Change the size of the nut or coin inside the balloon
  • Change the type of balloons that you use.
  • Change the size of the balloons that you use.

A man with a glove above a liquid nitrogen vapour cloud

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Comments

6 thoughts on “Balloon and nut hummer

    1. Awesome! It’s amazing when you get a bunch of people running it together. Don’t do it too long or the heat from the nut will warm the balloon and pop it 🙂
      Have fun!

  1. hey! This is an amazing experiment. Do you think it would work the same way if water was used to fill the balloon?

    1. Oh no! Oh well, it does make a fair bit of noise… guessing that the experiment worked 🙂

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