Bernoulli, You're Such a Wind Bag!

With just one breath you can fill up a 6 ft bag of air. Way to go wind bag! Challenge friends and coworkers to see how many breaths it takes them to fill up a bag with air.

Materials for this are

Diaper Genie Refills

Scissors

Open the diaper genie refill and pull out 6 ft. It does not have to be exact.

Cut the 6 ft length of diaper genie so you have a long bag. Both ends are open.

Tie one end of the bag.

You will now have a long tube bag.

Challenge a friend to blow up the bag. Keep count of how many breaths it takes them.

Explain to your friend that you can blow up the bag with one breath! Yeah one breath.

Hold the bag opening 9 to 10 inches away from your mouth. Have your friend hold the tied end of the bag.

Blow directly into the bag (still 9-10 inches away) as hard as possible.

As fast as possible, close up the bag to prevent any air from escaping.

Enjoy the confused looks as you stand next to your inflated bag!

What just happened? How did that work?

Using Bernoulli's Principle we are able to inflate the bag.

As you are blowing air into the bag more air in the room rushes into replace the air that was between you and the bag. Remember that 9 to 10 inches? The fast moving air from you created an area of low pressure, making the air in the room an area of high pressure. So you not only filled the bag with your air from your lungs but also with the air from the room.

"Bernoulli's Principle - the statement that an increase in the speed of a fluid produces a decrease in pressure and a decrease in the speed produces an increase in pressure" according to the Webster Dictionary.

We don't have to make it so complex to understand. The air flowing faster has low pressure and the slower air has a high pressure.

As a teacher I used this in my classes when I taught 6th grade science and also when I taught 8th grade. Explaining Bernoulli's Principle was a logical step to learning about Newton and building our rockets. Let's learn to fly (using Bernoulli's Principle) before we shoot for the moon (Newton's Laws of Motion).