Kids Want To Know How Your Hydraulic Equipment Works? Here's A Simple Experiment To Give Them Hands-On Experience
Posted on: 20 June 2016
If you work with hydraulics on a daily basis, you know how they work – the amount of pressure applied on one end is equal to the amount of desired pressure on the other end. The pressure applied on one end causes the other end to raise. Now, how do you explain that to your kids when they ask how your equipment works? If your kids want to know how your hydraulic equipment works, you want to find the simplest way possible – especially if your children aren't old enough to understand a complicated, in-depth explanation. Here's a fun experiment that will help your kids understand how hydraulics work. This project is simple enough for the whole family to enjoy and understand.
Supplies You'll Need
- Two feet of ½" clear plastic tubing
- One latex balloon - any color
- One empty tin can - any size
- Permanent marker
- Masking tape or duct tape
- Empty 2-liter bottle
- Small plastic funnel
- One phone book or other large book
- Scissors
- 2 cups of water
Create Your Hydraulic Pump
- Place your tin can up against your empty bottle.
- Make a line on the bottle slightly above the height of the tin can.
- Using the line that you drew as a guide, cut the top of the bottle off.
- Use your scissors to cut a small hole in the base of the plastic bottle.
- Place one end of the plastic tubing inside the balloon and seal with your tape.
- Place the balloon in the bottom of the bottle and feed the plastic tube through the hole you made.
- Place your tin can inside the bottle on top of the balloon.
- Set your book on top of the bottle to cover the main opening.
- Lift the exposed end of the plastic tube up and place the funnel inside the opening.
- Slowly pour water into the funnel.
- The water will flow through to the balloon.
- As the water fills the balloon, the can will begin to rise, which will cause the book to lift off the bottle.
- You can have your kids repeat the process with different sized books.
Kids like to know how things work. If you're kids are asking how your hydraulic equipment works, don't panic. You don't have to come up with an in-depth explanation. Have fun teaching your kids about hydraulics by using the simple hands-on experiment described above to help explain how the process works.
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