Mary Porter: Hi! I'm Mary Porter from Curiosity Zone. Today, we are doing simple science experiments for young kids that demonstrate principles of energy. Now, we are going to be creating a hovercraft that shows kids how air being forced out of a balloon can actually make a ship float forward. So the materials you are going to need are a simple CD that you can use from one that's all scratched up at your house or you can go buy them at the store. A water nozzle, that you can pull off of a water bottle from a grocery store, a balloon and you are going to need a hot glue gun and plenty of hot glue sticks, and then you are going to need some materials to decorate your hovercraft once you have assembled it.
So, the first thing we are going to do is attach the water nozzle to the CD, which is simple. We just take our hot glue gun and you got to make sure that you get it over the center hole of the CD obviously, so the air can push through. So, we are going to make a ring. This can be a little tricky. What I like to do is try to go ahead and put the hot glue on the cap itself because it is a little hard to guess where it is going to go down, if you try to put the glue on to the CD.
And so, we are going to just put that right on there and right in the center. This is something older kids can probably do themselves, but the younger ones are going to need you to do the hot glue for them. So, we stick the hot glue around the ring and you want to give this a second to set, so that the hot glue doesn't just pop right off, that the nozzle doesn't pop right off. And then the next step is to decorate your hovercraft however, you would like, so we'll take our sharpie markers and some foam pieces and we are just going to decorate our hovercraft and do whatever we want. Here we go, make stripes or circles.
Arts and crafts are great way to get kids engaged in a science project and to have them feel like it is their own. So, the final step once you have got your hovercraft decorated and your nozzle attached is to attach the balloon and we are going to stick this right over the nozzle and make sure that your nozzle is already open so that you can get air through it. We are going to stick the balloon right on top the nozzle just like this. This has a nice fit and you want the balloon to be centered over the top of the nozzle and now you are ready to go.
Now, we are going to see if our hovercraft actually works. What you want to do is pinch the balloon, so the air doesn't come out, set it down on the table and un-pinch it quickly while giving a little bit of a shove and you got make sure that the surface is really super smooth for it to float and glide easily. Here we go, let's give it a try on three, one, two, three. Next, we are going to learn how to use balloons to make a rocket pinwheel.
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