To be clear all I'm trying to confirm is that the scales tip because the air is compressed and only because it is compressed. If it wasn't compressed then the scales would not tip. Doing a bit of other research it seems that it's all to do with buoyancy, the difference between 'actual' weight...
Clearly air has weight, I'm not saying it doesn't. What I'm saying is that it's not the weight of this air in the blown up balloon that is causing the scales to tip. This is because the experiment is being conducted in an air environment and as such if hypothetically there was no compression...
OK, I agree the experiment shows that air has mass. It does this by compressing it and showing that in this compressed state within a ballon, surrounded by uncompressed air, the ballon's weight will increase. So yes the kid will sort of get the idea but it could confuse (if what I think is...
That doesn't confuse me. I'm not confusing mass or constant volume. The key point here is what 'weight' is. From my school physics I remember weight was mass multiplied by force which on Earth is it's gravity. But within this experiment you have to be more precise with measured weight...
It doesn't convince me - those pictures just re-state the experiment that I've already described. My thoughts are that the balloon filled with slightly compressed air (because it's under pressure) goes down (for want of a better term) because it is overall more dense than the air around it. I...
No compression hypothetically. I'm trying to confirm that the only reason the scales would tip in this experiment is due to the compression of the air - so if it were possible to contain the air in a container that was ridged but still weighed the same as the empty balloon (so no compression...
Thanks for your comments but my friend on reading them thinks he is being vindicated overall. He simply comes back to me with the statement that 'a balloon is heavier due to weight of the air'. My thoughts are that weight depends on the environment that the weighing is being done in and if it...
I've just purchased a book of child scientific experiments and it has an experiment that is titled 'Weigh some air'. It shows that if you make a scales with a piece of wood and a pivot and then balance two empty balloons on a either end and then fill one of the balloons with air the scales will...