Birthday Balloon Science

In honor of Jungle Girl's birthday yesterday,
the kiddos all got to go to the
Dollar Tree and pick out a balloon..

I also bought a six-pack of magnet clips,
and attached one to each balloon,
to keep them from floating away...

This morning, the kiddos decided to do
an impromptu experiment with the balloons
and their clips...

They wanted to see how quickly they could
make the balloons fall from the 2nd floor to the 1st...

One of the kiddos would attached some object
(like a flip flop or a stuffed animal)
to the clip and send it over the railing...

...to someone located on the 1st floor.
(I am still amazed no one got a black eye
during this process!)

Jungle Girl made an observation during this process...

Her balloon would continue to float off of the ground
without having its clip attached to an object,
but her siblings' balloons would float to the ground
without objects attached to their clips.

She noticed that her balloon had a longer ribbon,
so she made a hypothesis that the reason
her balloon stayed a float was because her
string was longer.

We tested this hypothesis by cutting her ribbon
to a shorter length.

Well, it still stayed a float.

So, we looked at the shape of the balloons...
Her siblings had just regular round shaped balloons...

Jungle Girl's balloon was a more rectangular in shape...

Her final conclusion?

Her balloon floated better because its shape
held more helium
than her siblings' balloons...

What a spontaneous way to begin the day...