Moon Blob - The Polyox Demonstration Everyone knows that water can't flow uphill. email to friend
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Everyone knows that water can't flow uphill. Not so fast... When a small amount of this special polymer is mixed with water, it dissolves forming a thick, slippery, gooey, honey-like gel. Oh, the visual imagery! When the gel is poured back and forth between two beakers, the liquid mysteriously siphons from the higher held beaker to the lower one. You can actually see the liquid being pulled out of the top beaker. Maybe water can flow uphill... you have to play with the stuff to believe it.

What's included?

• Two 600 mL plastic beakers
• Two Packages of Moon Blob Powder
• One 1-Liter Bottle
• Instructions

How does it work?

After just a few minutes of mixing, you'll notice that the viscous liquid flows very quickly from beaker to beaker. Hold the empty beaker below the full one and start to pour a little of the liquid into the lower beaker. What happens? The liquid will siphon itself from the top beaker to the bottom beaker. Notice how the liquid appears to defy gravity as it crawls up and over the sides of the full beaker in a self-siphoning kind of action. The trick is to just get the stream flowing from the top beaker to the bottom beaker and to watch how the long chains of molecules are being pulled up and out of the top beaker.

What does it teach?

Demonstrate the amazing properties of hydrogen bonding and the behavior of high molecular weight polymers.