Magic Flower

Pop this magic little science trick in your Valentine’s Day cards and your special
someone is guaranteed to smile. They’re great for get well or birthday cards
too!

1. Draw a flower on plain white paper and colour it

in with coloured pencils or crayons (felt pens will
run). You can download and print these flowers or
design your own. You can even write a lovey-
dovey secret admirer message instead of the
smiley face.

2. Carefully cut the flower out (the neater the

better).

3. Fold the petals over one by one (the flower will

open up differently depending on the order you
fold the petals.

4. Your Magic Flower should now look like this

(lame!).

5. Pour a teaspoon of water into a saucer.

 6. Pop the Magic Flower into the water in your
saucer and the petals immediately begin to open
up... just like a real flower blossoming!

7. Soon, the petals untangle and reveal the

smiley face (or the lovey-dovey message you
wrote) inside.

8. The flower will completely open in around thirty

seconds (it varies depending on the paper you
used). And if that doesn’t get you a smile, nothing
will.

what's going on?

Your Magic Flower is powered by a groovy scientific phenomenon called
'capillary action'. Thanks to capillary action, paper absorbs water very rapidly.
When paper gets wet, it swells which causes the folded petals of your Magic
Flower to open up.

As the name suggests, capillary action happens inside capillaries and it takes a
little explaining. The capillaries in your body are the minute blood vessels
between the end of your arteries and the beginning of your veins. But 'capillary'
can also mean a tiny tube, like a straw with a teeny-weeny tiny bore. Straws
with very narrow bores are absolutely useless for drinking milk shakes but
superb for studying capillary action.

Now you might have noticed that the water level inside a straw is slightly higher
than the water level outside. The water surface also curves up the sides of your
drinking glass a tiny bit. This is all because water is slightly more attracted to
glass and plastic than it is to itself.

This upward creeping makes the water surface curve downwards slightly from
the edges of a glass container or straw and this shape is called a negative
meniscus (meniscus means ‘crescent shapes’). Mercury is slightly less
attracted to glass than it is to itself so it does the opposite and bulges upwards
in a glass creating a positive meniscus. Mercury is very poisonous though, so
you should never, ever play with it!

Now here’s the interesting thing. If you place a whole bunch of glass straws,
each with a slightly narrower bore in water, you discover that the narrower the
bore, the higher the water level inside creeps up. This is capillary action! Putting
glass straws with tiny bores in water is a classic first year physics experiment at
university. I can still remember marvelling at the colourful anti-gravity water
inside little glass straws just like the ones in this photo in my first year at QUT.
It’s amazing!

So what does all this have to do with your Magic Flower? Well, if you put paper
under a microscope, you’ll notice it is not a solid, impenetrable substance.
Paper is made of tiny wood fibres which are tightly interwoven providing
amazing strength and a beautiful writing surface. Even in high quality
photocopier paper, there are billions of tiny little gaps between the fibres (paper
towel is made to be especially airy).

When paper comes into contact with water, the amazing power of capillary
action rapidly draws water into all these tiny spaces. It’s because the water is
slightly more attracted to the wood fibres than to itself. This helps trees and
plants to lift water from their roots up to their leaves. The Sun provides the extra
bit of lift required by evaporating water from tiny holes in the leaves called
stomata. This process is called transpiration and we wouldn’t be here without it.

But back to your Magic Flower. When the paper absorbs water (which it does
so well thanks to capillary action) it swells. That’s why paper goes wrinkly when
it gets wet but it also causes any folds to open back up again. If you folded each
neighbouring petal over sequentially, your flower will open very differently than
if you folded each opposite pair. Try experimenting with the order and you’ll see
what I mean.

But the best thing about Magic Flowers is that they simply make you smile.
Whether it’s someone you fancy or someone who’s not feeling too crash hot, a
Magic Flower is guaranteed to brighten up their day.
napkin siphon

Well, it's Christmas so here comes another three hour lunch with Aunty Beryl
(yawn!) and a stack of socks you don't need. Perfect timing for a very slow
dinner table science trick to amuse yourself until the turkey is gone.

1. You'll need two glasses, a napkin, some water

and a bucketload of patience. I've added green
food colouring to my water for a little seasonal
pizzazz.

2. Roll your napkin into a long piece of rope (a

little turkey grease won't affect your siphon's
performance).

3. Dip one end of the napkin into the full glass

and put the other inside the empty glass. Believe
it or not, you've just made a siphon. Now sit back
and let the good times flow.

4. It's about as thrilling as watching the grass

grow but water will slowly flow up the napkin and
into the empty glass. By my calculations, it should
be about a quarter full by Aunty Beryl's third
helping.

5. When the levels in both glasses are equal, the

siphon stops working and the show is over. This
should occur just as the pudding arrives. If you
want to completely drain the first glass, simply
elevate it above the other. In the meantime,
congratulations! You've survived another
Christmas lunch. Now pop those socks in a
drawer and get back to your nuclear fusion
research.

what's going on?

Your Christmas napkin siphon may be unbearably slow but the science that
makes it work is another one of those marvellous yet frequently overlooked
wonders of the natural world. It's called capillary action and it is no exaggeration
to say that you and I would not be here without it.
You've probably noticed that water instantly races up and into the fabric of a
paper napkin or tissue upon the slightest contact. That's capillary action at work
but what exactly causes the water to disobey gravity with such reckless
abandon?

The same thing happens to a lesser extent in a drinking straw resting in a glass
of water. Look carefully and you'll notice the water level inside the straw is
always slightly higher than the water surface outside. What you might not have
noticed is that the thinner the straw, the higher the water climbs up inside. You
can verify this fact with one of those tiny bendy straws you find on the side of a
single serve fruit juice carton. Here's a neat photo demonstrating the same
effect in glass straws with some really tiny internal diameters.

This surprising behaviour is the result of water's strong affinity for itself and its
attraction to countless other materials, like glass, plastic and cellulose. That
fierce attraction is driven by the electromagnetic force which binds every atom
in every molecule in the universe together.

Not all substances do this. Water does because the two hydrogen atoms and
single oxygen atom that make up each individual molecule arrange themselves
in an electrically nifty way. As a result, every water molecule has one slightly
negatively electrically charged end and two slightly positively charged tips.
Chemists call these electrically charged regions 'poles' (like the North and
South Pole) and chemicals that have them are polar molecules.

Those positive tips on one water molecule are very strongly attracted to the
negative poles of two others, and vice versa. And that is why water sticks to
itself so incredibly well — it's the electromagnetic attraction between them.

But water molecules are also strongly attracted to many other materials like
glass, plastic and paper. That's what makes those molecules in a glass of water
on the surface literally creep up walls. And those molecules pull more water
molecules up causing the surface of water in a glass or plastic cup to bow up at
the edges and form a concave shape, called a meniscus.

In a narrow tube, like a glass rod with a tiny hole running through it, the strong
attraction to the walls pulls water molecules up to incredible heights. Capillary is
just another name for a narrow tube and that's how this motion gets its name.
But again, it's the electromagnetic force driving the show and causing the water
to disobey gravity.

So, back to your little siphon then. There are billions of tiny little interconnected
spaces between the individual cellulose fibres in your napkin. Water is pulled up
into these spaces by the force of electromagnetic attraction to the cellulose.
Those water molecules pulled in drag others along because they are also very
strongly attracted to each other. Office paper is coated with clay to fill the tiny
spaces in an attempt to prevent the same thing from happening.

So capillary action draws the water to the top of the napkin but the siphoning
action is due to gravity. Once enough water molecules have crept up and over
the rim of the full glass, they begin their descent into the empty one. When the
lowest molecules in the empty glass descend below the water level in the full
one, gravity kicks in with a helping hand. Now the weight of the water in the
napkin on the empty side exceeds that above the water level in the full glass.
Gravity pulls down a little harder on the empty side and while the water levels
are unequal, the siphon keeps flowing. Once the levels are equal, the flow
stops.
Now if you're wondering how I can claim that you wouldn't be here without this
tricky little bit of science, it's because plants and trees simply could not grow
without it. Plants rely on capillary action to draw water up from the soil and into
their leaves. There it is combined with carbon dioxide and sunlight to produce
the sugars and oxygen that ultimately sustain us all. But capillary action is not
the full story. The final 'push' (or pull) is provided by the evaporation of water
through tiny holes, called stomata, in the bottom of the leaves. The combined
effect of capillary action plus the added pull by evaporation is called
transpiration and it is essential for plant growth. We eat plants, or animals that
eat plants (like turkeys) and so it's true to say that you and I would not be here
without the wonders of capillary action. That might sound a tad too profound
and a long way from your siphoning napkin but hey, it's Christmas! Have a good
one, and a very happy new year.
Flying Cups

Here's a kooky tricky to spice up those dreary family barbecues. Aunt Meryl will
marvel at the awesome altitudes your cups achieve.

1. Grab two identical, empty plastic cups.

2. Nest one inside the other.

3. Blow between the rims of the cups.

4. Phoomba! The top cup launches up, up and

away. Whoopy do eh?

Blow gently and the cup rises slowly ... wow man.

what's going on?

We all know that moving air can push things around but this cup seems to be
getting pulled. Strictly speaking, the cup isn't really being pulled by anything. It
is pushed up by air that is at higher pressure inside the cup. Two perplexing
properties of all fluids are responsible.

First, the air you blow flows around the cup rather than just bouncing off the
way a stream of bullets would ricochet off an impenetrable cylinder. This
tendency of flowing fluids to 'stick' to obstacles is called the Coanda Effect. It's
named after Henry Coanda who is widely regarded as the godfather of modern
jet planes.

Second is the confusing fact that fluids exert less pressure when they flow
across the surface of an object. This is called Bernoulli's Principle and as far as
counterintuitive phenomena go, it's a doozey. The trick is to remember that
fluids such as air and water are made of incredibly tiny molecules, which never
sit perfectly still. Even when there is no net flow in a fluid, the molecules
constantly jostle around, bumping into each other and bouncing off in all
directions. Now the individual collisions molecules and large bodies such as
yours don't really pack much of a punch. But multiply the tiny force of one
collision by a kazillion and they add up to exert considerable pressure. It's a bit
like being shot from every direction by trillions of tiny molecular bullets. You
don't usually this pressure because it is equal in every direction. But when fluids
flow across the surface of an object, there are less collisions directly against it.
The molecular bullets graze along the surface, putting less pressure on it.

Let's combine these effects and get back to those cups. The air you blow hugs
the area between the rims. Because it's flowing along this surface, there is now
less pressure between the rims than before. But inside the bottom cup, the
relatively still air is at the same pressure as before which is higher than the
reduced pressure near the rim. This higher pressure air forces the top cup up
and out of the bottom cup. Yippee.

Fruity Paper Critter

Grab a lemon and a paper towel and discover yet another way to waste some
of your valuable time. Remarkably simple, slightly scientific and surprisingly
amusing.

1. Grab a lemon and a paper towel or napkin.

2. Twist the corners of the paper towel to make

four legs.

3. Pop the lemon under the paper towel or

napkin. Draw some freaky eyes and a scary
mouth for added effect.
 4. Gently push your 'bug' along a smooth table so
the lemon rolls under the paper towel. It will
scurry about in random directions and terrify your
unsuspecting dinner guests. Fruity!

what's going on?

A rolling lemon doesn't usually frighten anyone. But disguised as a bug under a
paper towel, they can wreak havoc!

The freakiness is mainly due to the unexpected motion of the rolling lemon
inside. Any round but not perfectly spherical object will roll in a slightly
unpredictable manner. When you can see the rolling lemon, this motion isn't
surprising at all. But nobody expects a scrunched up paper towel to move this
way. With the lemon hidden away from view, its motion resembles that of a
scurrying insect or small animal.

Pointless yes, but this rolling piece of fruit might just make you smile on an
otherwise fruitless day.