Sunday, January 25, 2009

water faucet and balloon

So today i was playing with a balloon near the kitchen sink and noticed something amazing. I rubbed the balloon on my hair. This caused the initially neutral balloon to gain electrons from my hair through friction, therefore giving one area of it a negative charge. As i brought the balloon near the stream of water, the water was deflected towards the balloon. After visiting the physics home page i was able read up on this phenomenon and understand what exactly was going on. Molecules in water are free to move about and rearrange themselves. The hydrogen atoms are positive, and oxygen atoms are negative. As i brought the balloon near the water, the molecules in the water moved around so that the positive atoms were near the negatively charged balloon. This therefore caused an attraction between the balloon and stream of water.

2 comments:

jcarlile09 said...

no waste water

kohara said...

ignore jon, haha.

nice one justin!