Opening Up | English | Capillary in Action
Channel: Arvind Gupta
Date: 22/11/2014

In this delightful experiment a close fist cut out from newsprint is placed in water. And slowly the fingers open up! How does this happen? For this you require cutouts of various shapes – hand, spider’s web and a mobile from old newspapers. Here is a circle cut from newsprint. Draw a spider in the middle and also its web. Then cut a six pointed star from this paper. Curl all the six points towards the center. Then place it in a plate full of water. We know that newsprint is made of cellulose – plant material and the fibers act as capillaries carrying water. Soon the newsprint become wet, heavy and flattens out. This is an advertisement of a mobile in the daily newspaper. Once again cut and curl from both ends and place it in water. Soon the newsprint will become wet and the mobile will flatten out. 
Finally cut the shape of the palm with all the fingers from newsprint. Curl all the fingers towards the palm. On placing the palm in water the fingers will magically open up! This work was supported by IUCAA and Tata Trust. This film was made by Ashok Rupner TATA Trust: Education is one of the key focus areas for Tata Trusts, aiming towards enabling access of quality education to the underprivileged population in India. To facilitate quality in teaching and learning of Science education through workshops, capacity building and resource creation, Tata Trusts have been supporting Muktangan Vigyan Shodhika (MVS), IUCAA's Children’s Science Centre, since inception. To know more about other initiatives of Tata Trusts, please visit www.tatatrusts.org