Not your usual experiment, this is a book: “The League of Scientists” is a young adult fiction book by Andy Kaiser (the creator of Digital Bits Science Lab).

Equipment needed:

The League of Scientists is available here: http://www.LeagueOfScientists.com

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

The League of Scientists is a group of smart kids who love science. They use their knowledge and critical thinking skills to solve seemingly-supernatural mysteries.

One of the components of the book is the mystery aspect, and not just the “main” mystery. In most chapters, there is a puzzle. The solution to the puzzle involves the application of science or critical thinking. The book is intended to give science education (and scientific applications – something you don’t always get from such fiction) while still giving kids a good story and characters.

This experiment shows how to separate pepper and salt using a balloon and static electricity.

Equipment needed:

One balloon (a comb and some plastic hairbrushes will also work well for this, particularly if you’re worried about the balloon bursting)

A cloth (wool will work best)

Salt

Pepper

Safety glasses

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Wear safety glasses for this experiment – you don’t want salt or pepper getting in your eyes.

Mix a small pile of salt and pepper. The challenge here is to separate the salt from the pepper.

It’s easy if you have a balloon: inflate the balloon. Rub the cloth on the balloon, and the balloon will become negatively charged. This means the balloon will become attracted to objects that have a different charge. Luckily for us, the salt and pepper fall into this category.

After charging the balloon, hold it above the salt and pepper mixture and slowly bring it closer. You’ll see the pepper fly up and stick to the balloon, leaving the salt behind. The salt stays put because it’s heavier than the pepper. This is why you want to move slowly, because if you move too close too fast, the salt will also fly up and attach to the balloon.

When you’re done, you can either wipe or wash the balloon off to remove the pepper. Don’t pop it, or you’ll get pepper everywhere! 

You can direct the flow of water without touching it. All you need is a little static electricity.

Equipment needed:

One balloon

A sink with running water

A cloth (wool will work best)

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Turn on the water faucet. Make sure the water flow comes out very slow and thin (a thinner water stream is easier to redirect).

Rub the balloon with the cloth to build up a static electric charge.

Bring the balloon close to the water stream. When the balloon gets close to the water, the negative static charge will attract the water and “pull” the stream towards the balloon:

The charge will wear off within a few seconds, so the effect won’t last long!

Static electricity is the transfer of electrons from one material to another. You can see the effects of static electricity using balloons.

Equipment needed:

Two balloons inflated to the same size.

A light stick approximately two feet long (a couple of long matchsticks or chopsticks will do the trick)

Duct tape, masking tape, or some other heavier-duty tape.

String

A piece of cloth (wool works best). Something sock-sized or washcloth-sized will be fine.

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

If needed, create your “stick”. In the pictures below, I used a couple of long matchsticks, and just duct-taped them together. The goal is to create a stick long enough to suspend two balloons, and prevent them from easily touching a wall.

Cut two equal lengths of string, approximately 2 feet long. Tie each balloon to the stick using its own piece of string. Make sure the baloons are both at the same level.

Tape the stick on to a wall. Inside of a room entrance worked for me. This allows the balloons to extend into a room, while being held away from the walls.

The balloons may stick to each other slightly, or be repelled slightly, as we see here:

Now, rub one of the balloons with the wool, and let it drop. What happens? It may “bounce” away from the other balloon. It may stick to it.

Rub the second balloon with the wool, and let it drop. Both balloons should bounce away from each other. If you’ve built up enough of a charge, one balloon may even bounce off of the other balloon and stick to the wall:

What’s happening here?

Static electricity is the imbalance of electron charges. When you rub a balloon with the cloth, you’re actually moving electrons from the cloth to the baloon. The addition of the electrons gives the balloon a negative charge.

A couple simple rules when dealing with static electricity:

Objects will repel each other if they have the same charge. A balloon with a negative charge will repel other balloons with a negative charge. This is why the balloons pushed away from each other when we rubbed them both with the cloth.

Objects will attract each other if they have different charges.A balloon with a positive charge will attract other things with a negative charge. This is why rubbing a balloon attracts it to the wall – the wall has a more positive charge, which attracts the balloons more negative charge.

We use balloons in this experiment because they’re very light: the static attraction/repulsion is easier to see. But you can charge other things, too. See what other things you can make stick to the balloon (hint: you’ll have good luck with thin, light things, like paper, or hair).