- Aerated Water
- Air Engine
- Air Table
- Are you Hot or Not?
- Balancing Act
- Bending Beams
- Block the gap
- Braille
- Bridge the Gap
- Chalk Wall
- Changing Faces
- Chaotic Motion
- Circle of Discovery
- Circle of Discovery- The Internet
- Circle of Discovery-Bridge Design
- Circle of Discovery-Ideas hub
- Circle of Discovery-Internet
- Circle of Discovery-Medicine
- Circle of Discovery-photography
- Circle of Discovery: Design - Earthquake
- Circulation
- Colour Wheel
- Communication Codes
- Communication Dishes
- Computer
- Crystallography
- Digestive System
- Down the Drain
- Electromagnetic Spectrum
- Fibre Optics
- Flight Simulator
- Gear Table
- Handshake Mirror
- Harmonograph
- High Flyer
- Hit the Target
- Horizontal Periscope
- Human Battery
- It's Electric
- Larger Than Life
- Lift Me Pull You
- Light Table
- Lock Box
- Making Waves
- Mini Harmonograph
- Mobile Phone
- Move It
- Nervous System
- Newtons Cradle
- Organ Pipe
- Organ Pipe Tune
- Oscillating Pendulums
- Pendulums
- People Power
- Periscope
- Prove Pythagoras
- Radar
- Radio Station
- Reactable
- Reflection Refraction
- Robot Arm
- Science of Sport
- Sensation
- Simple Camera
- Simple Circuits
- Smoke Tunnel
- Solar Energy
- Sound Waves
- Structures and Stresses
- Telescope
- The Exhibition
- The Eye
- The Lung and Chest Cavity
- The Wheel Race
- Thermal Imager
- Tornado
- Tower of Hanoi
- Universe Wall
- Up and Down
- Vertical Periscope
- Viscosity
- Viscosity Plungers
- Volume and Mass
- Vortex
- Watch Your Waste
- Weight Lifter
- Wheels Within Wheels
- Wind Tunnel
High Flyer
High Flyer demonstrates the effect of an air flow on an object. Air resistance and the Bernoulli Principal can be investigated.
Activity.... Do – Think - Learn
The earth is surrounded by air which exerts pressure (pushes) on everything. What do you think will happen if you blow air between the two balls that hang from the ceiling?
Try it, was it what you expected?
Can you make the beach ball float?
Why does it still work when air jet is at an angle?
The Science Bit
The pressure of air that moves decreases as the speed of the air increases. The air blown between the two red balls suspended from the ceiling is fast moving therefore has a low pressure. The pressure is lower than that of the non-moving air on the outside of the balls. The higher pressure on the outside pushes the two balls towards each other.
When the floating beach ball is in the middle of the air flow then the flow of air is evenly spread around the ball. If it moves from the middle to one side then the side with less air has more pressure and moves the ball back to the middle.
Curriculum Links
Pushes and Pulls
- That it is not only ourselves that make things move by pushing
- To ask questions about what is causing movement
Gases around us
- That air has weight and is all around us
- To explain phenomena related to air in terms of scientific knowledge and understanding
- That there are many gases and many of these are important to us
- That gases flow more easily than liquids and in all directions
Forces in Action
- That air resistance slows moving objects
- That when an object falls, air resistance acts in the opposite direction to the weight
Last Modified: 28/07/2011
