Potato Chip Science

Ok, so I saw the "Potato Chip Science Kit" in the ThinkGeek catalog last month & was looking for a reason to buy it.

A Friday empty of an event? Sweet! Finding that my local

Learning Express carried it clinched the deal - we were going to geek on some science potato style!

The experiments we chose out of the 29 possible were easily narrowed done: Fire? No, the library wouldn't be very happy with me. Water? Best not. No cooking or week long directions either. What were we left with? Some pretty fun experiments:

"Bag Blaster" Field: Rocketry Concept: Propulsion

--- making a rocket & power pack with some chip snack bags & a straw

"Electric Wave" Field: Physics Concept: Electrostatic

--- making our own stadium wave using "fans" cut from chip bags, some tape and a balloon.

"Dancing Chips" Field: Acoustics Concept: Sound Waves (photo above left)

--- using sound waves from a Pringles can to make chip crumbs bounce around on a drum surface.

"Kissing Tubes" Field: Physics Concept: Bernoulli's Principle (photo above right)

--- can blowing between 2 chip cans make them come together? Yup! Cans, straw & breath needed.

"Propulsion Pipe" Field: Pneumatics Concept: Boyle's Law

--- 1 clear tube, some potato slices & a pen = recipe for a potato war

"Saucer Tosser" Field: Aeronautics Concept: Bernoulli's Principle

--- using chip can lids - can you design a more efficient flyer than a plain one?

As you can imagine the boys favored the Propulsion Pipe and what's not to love? First you jam each end of a plastic tube into a potato slice. Then using an unsharpened pencil to shove the first toward the second we managed to send the tater missile clear across the library community room with a satisfying "pop" noise. Once demonstrated they all clamored to try it and the war was on!