Center of Gravity - Balancing

Balancing a broom

I saw this on Pink and Green Mama and just had to try it out, although, I know it has nothing to do with the equinox.  You can balance anything any day if you just find the center of gravity.  Looks nice and spooky though for Halloween today.  Don't look at the mess in the kitchen - still have lots of unpacking to do.  Scroll below to see more examples of things balancing.

Balancing Egg

Cool!  I saw this experiment over at Puddles and Butterflies Homeschool and thought we'd give it a try.

Ta-Da!!

The trick is to pour a small amount of salt into the palm of your hand and then place the egg bottom into the salt.  A little bit will stick to the egg.  This is enough to make the egg balance. 

Update:  We finally figured out how to make an egg balance without the salt.  And look, it's balanced on the narrow, skinny end!  It's all in the way you hold your hands.  To see more, click here.

 

Then we tried standing on eggs.

     

The kids standing on a carton of eggs.      Whew!  They didn't crack...amazing!

  

 The kids decided that it must really be from the strength of the carton so we tried it again with an empty carton and the carton smashed flat.  They were amazed to find that eggs really are very strong.

We want to try this one next.

We tested individual egg's strength by trying to crush them in the palm of our hands but the kids couldn't do it.

I got Ethan good with this trick.

    

Have your victim stand on one side of a door then have them stick their fingers through the crack in the door and grab an egg like this.

     

Next, walk away and your victim will be trapped.  They can't let go of the egg for fear of breaking it and making a mess and they can't reach the egg to save themselves. 

Very funny!!

Eggs-periments

See the other egg experiments we've done on our Physical Science page.  You'll have to scroll up and down the page.

A friend sent us the link to this fun science experiment website.  So far, we've tried out the this one and this one.      Fun and easy!!

 

                              Balancing a Soda Can                                               Flying Cups

 

To try out more science tricks, click here.

The Rock Balancing Art of Bill Dan

Amazing!  Looks impossible but we're are psyched and ready to try it!  Beautiful!

    

You can see much more of his beautiful work on his website and more on his blog site.

He also balances other things.

         

Here's are kids learning how to balance rocks.  We're going to do this in the next few days, too.

Here are some fun balancing things we did with pennies before and a hammer and a ruler.

http://www.fincher.org/Misc/Pennies/

Center of Gravity Experiments

We managed to balance a ruler at the very edge of a table while supporting the weight of a hammer under it.  The feat seemed impossible and we were wowed when we were actually able to do it!  Very Cool!!

Try it.  All you need is a wooden ruler, a hammer and 10 inches of string or twine.  Knot the string and slip it over the ruler and then slip the hammer handle into the loop as well.  Position them as shown and viola!

This guy has amazing balancing skills!!

 

 

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