Bending Water

Aim:To find out if we can bend water, and if so how?

Question:How do you possibly bend water? Can you do it?

Hypothesis: We don’t think we can bend water.

Experiment - Equipment
If you are going to bend water you will need...
• A nylon comb
• A stream of water out of the tap
• Dry hair

Procedure:
1. Turn on the water so it is falling from the tap in a narrow stream (just a few millimetres across but not droplets.)
2. Run the comb through your hair just as you normally would when brushing it. (do this several times)
3. Move the comb closer to the stream of water from the tap
4. Slowly bring the teeth of the comb near the stream of water, about 3 or 4 inches below the faucet.
5. When the teeth of the comb are about an inch or less away from the stream, the stream will bend towards the comb.

Observation: After running the nylon comb through our hair, the hairs on our head stood on end.
When the teeth of the comb were placed about an inch or less away from the stream of water, the stream of water bent towards the comb.

Conclusion: When you comb your hair with a nylon comb, both the comb and your hair become charged. The comb and your hair acquire opposite charges. Because the individual hairs acquire the same charge, they repel each other. This is static electricity.

The comb attracts the stream of water in the same way. The charge on the comb attracts the molecules of water in the stream. Because the molecules in the stream can be moved easily, the stream bends toward the comb.

Next Steps: Next time we do the experiment we will use other variables and check what happens.

Variables we will use are as follows:

• How the distance between the stream and the comb affect how much the stream bends.
• Run the comb through our hair several more times and see if the comb bends the stream of water more.
• Change the size of the stream by adjusting the tap.
• Use other combs and try these to see if some bend the stream more than others.

We enjoyed doing this Science Investigation.