Floating Tricks You Should See!

Step 1: Chain Reaction

In this experiment we used lots of short ball chains and connected them all. *Note - if you don't have tons of ball chains, you can use Rigatoni pasta and pass a rope through them connecting them all. You can even color them different colors for an added effect too!

Get a small glass jar or if you decided to go with the pasta version, get a large bowl. Start adding one end of the chain into the jar. You don't want to add it all at once because it might get tangled.

Place your filled jar on a table. *Note - If you want to repeat the experiment add another empty jar on the floor to catch the chain.

Now that you are all set, grab the end of the chain in the glass jar and let it rip! The reaction will keep going until the jar is empty!

Step 2: Which One Will Float?

Fill a glass with water, a little more than half way. Grab two oranges and a scale. Go ahead and peel one of the oranges. Leave the peel on the second orange.

Now we are going to weigh the unpeeled orange and the peeled orange separately. Take a piece of paper and record the numbers from the scale.

Before adding the oranges to the glass of water, which one do you think will float? Pretty safe to guess the one that weighed the lightest will float.

Let's start with the peeled orange. Did it float?

Now add the unpeeled orange. Did it float?

The one that weighed the heaviest is the one that actually floats!

Step 3: Floating Paper Clip

Take a small glass and fill it with water right before its about to overflow. Try placing a paper clip on the surface of the water. No luck? There's definitely a solution!

First get yourself a tissue and cut it a little bigger than the paper clip. Place the cut tissue paper on the surface of the water. Now place the paper clip on top of the tissue. Here is the solution - with a toothpick, slowly push the tissue paper to the bottom of the glass without touching the paper clip. Viola´, floating paper clip. To break the water tension drop some dish soap on the paper clip.

Step 4: Floating Potato

This experiment really takes floating to another level. Grab a potato and cut it in half. Fill a glass half way with water. Place one half of the potato in the glass. Did it float? Of course not, we haven't reached the cool part of the trick yet. Remove the potato from the glass or grab another glass and fill it half way with water.

This time lets add lots and I mean lots of sugar to the water. Mix up the water and the sugar. Take the half cut potato and put it in the glass. Did it float? Yup all the way to the top, but now we are going to take it up a level.

ThIs time either remove the sugar water so the glass is half full or start with a third glass and fill it half way with sugar water. Now to take it up a level. Grab another glass filled with plain water and tilt the half filled glass of sugar water - making sure the potato is already in the glass. Slowly pour the plain water into the glass filled with sugar water. *Note - let the water run down the inside of the glass. Did it float? Yup right between the plain water and the sugar water!