Today I came to the Museum as a junior intern and learned about air at Air Fair.  I saw that air could move many different objects and is everywhere around us even if we don’t realize it.

Here I am sending messages through air mail, which happens because moving air creates a pushing force and sends the balls through the tubes.

These are the messages I sent, and me receiving them.

Later I tried on headphones that showed me how different ears can hear different things. Bigger ears, like those that elephants have, can hear more. This happens because the sound waves that travel through air and bounce off of shapes of our ear. Bigger ears have more to bounce off of so they can hear more.

Then before I left I tried the pnuematic launch.  In my video you can see how the bowling ball pushes the air from its big tube into a smaller connected tube that holds a tennis ball. When I let go of the rope that holds the bowling ball, the bowling ball drops and forces air from the big tube into the little one, and the speed of the air changes. Watch and see how different air speeds launch the ball!

Remember that air is all around you, even if you can’t see it. I took some more pictures so you could see more experiments with air and what I did today. Just click here to see them. Have a good day!