We ran a lab today that showed the power of the surface tension of water, we started with a cup of water filled all the way to the rim, and tested how many paperclips we could add to the water before it would overflow out of the cup.
The biggest guess was that we could place 35 paperclips into the cup before it would overflow and we were shocked that it too 89 paperclips before the water flowed over the edge. Along the way kids observed that the bubble over the top of the cup was so large that it was bending the light allowing us to see the paperclips under the edge of the cup while looking across the edge of the cup.
We then floated a paperclip on the top of the bubble of water to demonstrate in a different way the power of surface tension.
Finally we added a little bit of dish soap and saw the surface tension lower so much that the floating paperclip sank to the bottom of the cup and the bubble of water over the rim of the cup spilled over the edge.
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