Get Your Science On: String Fountain

 In Get Your Science On, Shopcasts and Videos

Adam shows off a colorful and dynamic experiment that you can build with a blower, some flexible tubing, plastic pipe and some yarn!

How to Build It

We used an inflator for an air mattress, but you can use a shop vac, leaf blower, or anything at all that blows air. Attach a tube to the blower, and a plastic pipe to the tube. Drill a small hole in the pipe near the tube, and feed the string through.

What’s Going On?

The fast moving air column has a lower pressure than the surrounding air, and so the yarn stays in the air column for as long as it can! Since the string forms a closed loop in gets pulled back in the hole at the base of the plastic pipe. The higher air pressure on the outside of the pipe helps to push the yarn back into the hole.