Re: pinhole Does air have mass?

From: Lori Lambertson (loril@exploratorium.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 26 2001 - 16:08:56 PDT

• Next message: Lori Lambertson: "another air has mass idea"
• Previous message: David Fairman: "Does air have mass?"
• In reply to: David Fairman: "Does air have mass?"

Message-Id: <l03110701b7d80b90d7fc@[192.174.3.134]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 16:08:56 -0700
From: Lori Lambertson <loril@exploratorium.edu>
Subject: Re: pinhole Does air have mass?

Hi Dave,
Here are two pretty easy things your students can do to show that air has mass.
1) Mass an uninflated balloon and an inflated balloon. Compare the two
masses. Paul says that when you do this you are actually weighing the
compressed part of the air - but this still does show that compressed air
has mass.
2) Mass some water in a beaker and mass an unwrapped "alka seltzer" like
tablet (use generic stuff to keep the price down) and add those two masses
together. Then drop the tablet in the water, noticing that gas is given
off. Mass the water and beaker with the dissolved alka seltzer and compare
it to the original sum of the two masses before adding the tablet to the
water. Triple beam balances are sensitive enough to show a difference.
Cheers,
Lori Lambertson
Exploratorium Teacher Institute

• Next message: Lori Lambertson: "another air has mass idea"
• Previous message: David Fairman: "Does air have mass?"
• In reply to: David Fairman: "Does air have mass?"

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Mon Aug 05 2002 - 09:21:35 PDT