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Flying Tea Bag: Home Science Experiment

video Flying Tea Bag: Home Science Experiment

BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU TRY THIS! PERFORM WITH ADULT SUPERVISION.

Warm air rises. When the tea bag is burned, it fills with warm air. When the warm air rises it carries the tea bag with it. This is similar to how a hot air balloon works.

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6 comments

Jul 28, 2010. 1:49 PMMudbud says:

this is interesting but the name 'Flying Tea Bag' sounds funny

Apr 19, 2012. 3:04 PMclobber24 says:

lol

Mar 5, 2011. 7:46 PMfirepup104 says:

Your a sick puppie

Aug 5, 2010. 4:14 PMa_person says:

lol

Jan 1, 2011. 8:25 PMImageMaker says:

Too bad you're explaining the mechanism incorrectly -- that's bad science teaching. The open-topped paper cylinder clearly can't "fill with hot air" (the way a hot air balloon does) to lift the unburned remnant; instead, when the bag has burned down far enough, the drag of the rising air current feeding the flame becomes greater than the weight of the remaining bag remnant, and the bag is blown up into the air. BTW, this is a really good way to set your house on fire if you don't take (obvious) precautions that you failed to mention -- hope no one's been hurt because you didn't warn them about the hazards of randomly flying bits of burning paper.

P.S. it's a lot cheaper to make these little things out of toilet paper folded into a closed-end "pocket" (fold two sides inward over each other, dividing the sheet in thirds, then fold the resulting strip/tube in half and open out the free ends to give the tube some volume and let it stand while you ignite it -- extra caution applies, since you'll have two separate bits of flaming paper taking to the air).